Since phasing out of traditional bilateral development cooperation with China the Federal German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) is working with China as a global partner in triangular, regional or global cooperation formats. In that regard, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) is implementing the project Support of Regional Economic Cooperation in Asia (SRECA) on behalf of BMZ.
As its predecessor regional projects, SRECA supports the Greater Tumen Initiative (GTI) especially the GTI Secretariat with institutional capacity building and Mongolia with technical assistance. Mongolia is the least developed member within GTI (China, Republic of Korea (RoK), and Russia). GTI focuses on the priority areas of transport, trade and investment, tourism, energy, and agriculture with the environment as a cross-cutting sector. Specialised boards and committees coordinate the cooperation between the member countries. Each sector’s board/committee is composed of officials from relevant line ministries and state agencies of the member countries. As a strategic partner, GIZ has been supporting the implementation of GTI activities since 2010. Among the activities are advisory services, technical studies as well as tailor-made training for the organisational development of the GTI Secretariat and selected GTI mechanisms like the Trade and Investment Committee, the Agricultural Committee or the Northeast Asian Local cooperation Committee (LCC).
To renew the cooperation commitment between the GTI Secretariat and GIZ SRECA, both parties came together on 14 December 2020. Mr. Andrey Smorodin, Director GTI Secretariat and Mr. Thorsten Giehler, Country Director GIZ China signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) together with Mr. Florian Miss, Project Director GIZ SRECA and Mr. Sergey Khidirov, Senior Programme Officer GTI Secretariat.
Both partners will continue to jointly work on sustainable economic development and regional economic integration topics in Northeast Asia.