Central Asian Regional Economic Cooperation

The Central Asian Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Program is a project-based partnership launched in 1997 and formalized as a ministerial body in 2002, hosted and managed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). It is not a treaty organization and has no permanent secretariat outside ADB; decisions are taken by consensus at annual Ministerial Conferences and Senior Officials' Meetings.

CAREC has 11 member countries: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, the People's Republic of China (with particular focus on Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia), Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Its six multilateral institution partners are the ADB, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Bank.

The program's work is organized around its long-term strategy, CAREC 2030, adopted in 2017, which structures cooperation into five operational clusters: economic and financial stability; trade, tourism, and economic corridors; infrastructure and economic connectivity; agriculture and water; and human development. Earlier programming concentrated on six CAREC Transport Corridors linking Western China and South Asia to European and Middle Eastern markets, supported by the Transport and Trade Facilitation Strategy.

CAREC functions primarily as a coordination and co-financing platform: member governments identify priority projects, and partner institutions blend loans, grants, and technical assistance. Cumulative project financing surpassed USD 40 billion by the early 2020s, the bulk going to roads, railways, border-crossing points, and power interconnections. The CAREC Institute, headquartered in Urumqi since 2015, provides research and capacity building.

For Model UN and IR researchers, CAREC is often compared with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Eurasian Economic Union, and China's Belt and Road Initiative — though unlike those, CAREC is explicitly apolitical, technocratic, and donor-driven rather than geopolitical.