To Secure Billions in Trade, Central Asia Needs an Implementation Hub

As leaders of the five Central Asian states gather in Tashkent for the Seventh Consultative Meeting of the Heads of State, the region enters a critical phase in its shift from political commitments to genuine economic integration. Since the format was first proposed by the President of Uzbekistan at the UN General Assembly in 2017, the annual consultative meetings have become the main platform for rebuilding trust, opening borders, and easing decades-long political sensitivities that had kept Central Asia divided.

Early meetings in Astana and Tashkent laid the groundwork for dialogue; later gatherings in Cholpon-Ata, Dushanbe, and most recently Astana produced increasingly ambitious agreements, including the landmark 2022 Agreement on Friendship, Good-Neighbourliness and Cooperation and the 2024 Concept for Central Asia–2040, which outlines a long-term vision for cooperation in trade, transportation, water, environment, security, and cultural links.

The impact has been notable. Over the past eight years, the region’s combined GDP has grown significantly, intra-regional trade has nearly doubled, foreign investment flows among Central Asian countries have increased, and mobility for tourists, students, and businesses has become considerably easier.

Although the region’s internal trade share remains modest at around nine percent of total exports, still well below ASEAN’s 20–25 % or the European Union’s roughly 60 %, the trend is positive. Central Asia is behaving much more like a unified region today than at any point since gaining independence.

Yet, the increasing complexity of economic interdependence also reveals the limitations of a solely political, consensus-driven, and non-binding approach.

The recent trade ministers’ meeting in Tashkent highlighted this issue. The ministers reaffirmed ambitious goals, such as increasing mutual trade to $20 billion in the near future, developing joint industrial platforms, promoting a “Made in Central Asia” brand, enhancing transport connectivity, and harmonizing regulatory regimes to support integrated value chains.

While these initiatives are encouraging, they risk remaining aspirational without the implementation of structured mechanisms to monitor, coordinate, and execute them.

A Secretariat will transform C5’s agreements into economic gains

A Secretariat is the logical next step to transform the C5’s ambitious political agreements into tangible economic gains. Comparisons with ASEAN and the European Union provide valuable perspectives and good examples. ASEAN operates on principles similar to those of the Central Asia consultative format, sovereign equality, consensus, and flexibility, but it has gradually built the institutional scaffolding needed to advance genuine cooperation.

The ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta, while modest in size, plays a critical role in monitoring commitments, harmonizing standards, coordinating ministerial councils, and producing regular scorecards that assess progress.

The EU, with its much deeper supranational model, reinforces the broader point: agreements carry weight only when institutions ensure that decisions are translated into regulations, funding, and enforcement. Central Asia does not need a replica of Jakarta or Brussels, but it does need something more than an annual set of declarations.

The time is right for institutionalization. A permanent Central Asia Secretariat, initially small, efficient, and focused, could serve as the region’s implementation hub. Its role would involve translating political decisions into practical action plans, coordinating ministerial working groups on trade, transport, and tourism, preparing regional project pipelines for development partners, and monitoring progress toward clearly defined targets, especially the recently endorsed $20 billion mutual trade goal.

It could also unify the increasing number of joint initiatives across sectors, ensuring they form a coherent regional strategy instead of a collection of unrelated efforts.

Unified Gateway Channels Foreign Investment

As the EU, China, and Gulf states engage the region as a bloc, a unified institutional gateway is crucial to channel investment and avoid fragmented partnerships. Such a Secretariat would also enable Central Asia to speak with greater consistency to external partners.

These actors are increasingly viewing Central Asia as a single strategic region. Whether in the EU–Central Asia summit, the C5+1, the Gulf–Central Asia dialogues, or Türkiye’s growing regional involvement, international players are seeking regional frameworks, yet the institutional capacity on the Central Asian side remains limited.

A Secretariat could act as a gateway for engagement, reducing fragmentation and helping to ensure that external partnerships support regional priorities rather than duplicate efforts or create competition.

The economic advantages of deeper institutionalization are equally persuasive. Harmonized customs procedures, unified digital transit systems, and mutually recognized technical standards could substantially lower trade costs. Joint industrial zones in textiles, agrifood, fertilizers, machinery, and mining-related processing could serve as anchors for regional value chains and attract larger, more stable foreign investments.

A coordinated tourism strategy, featuring harmonized visas, joint regional routes, and integrated marketing, could boost intra-regional tourist flows, which already comprise the majority of travel in the region. Better aligned transport and logistics rules would improve the competitiveness of the Middle Corridor, the North–South routes to the Persian Gulf, and emerging east–west links. For all these ambitions, political support is necessary but not enough; building institutional capacity is essential.

Flexible Projects Build Cooperation Now

Parallel to the strengthening of regional institutions, it would be useful to develop bilateral and multilateral project initiatives that do not require the participation of all five countries. This is a pragmatic approach, which some experts call “project-based integration.”

Its necessity is driven by three key reasons:

1. Different paths to global markets. All countries in the region remain landlocked and depend on transit through third countries, which pushes them towards flexible, multi-level formats rather than a single integration structure.

2. The commodity-based nature of their economies limits incentives for deep economic convergence along the lines of the EU.

3. The growth of project cooperation already proves its effectiveness. The region is increasingly relying on niche formats, such as “green corridors” in energy between Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan or plans for water-energy integration between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

This approach allows states to join forces where their interests align and, when necessary, involve external actors, such as Azerbaijan and other countries of the South Caucasus, without the unrealistic expectation that all five countries will move at the same pace.

Thus, these two paths, institutionalization and project integration, do not contradict but rather reinforce each other. A regional Secretariat could provide an overall strategic framework, harmonize standards, and attract large-scale investments, while project initiatives (“project-based integration”) would quickly solve specific tasks and build cooperation in those sectors and with those participants that are most ready for it.

Outlook

The Tashkent summit is at a decisive stage. The story of cooperation has already been written; now it is important to turn promises into action. By supporting phased institutionalization and simultaneously encouraging flexible project cooperation, the leaders of Central Asia can lay a solid foundation for a future where the region is both united in its pursuit of prosperity and pragmatic in its choice of tools to achieve it.