Shanghai Cooperation Organization to benefit from India's, Pakistan's accession - Federation Council Chair Matviyenko
MOSCOW. July 8 (Interfax) - India and Pakistan are likely to become members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) next year, and the SCO will only benefit from their accession, says Russian Federation Council Chair Valentina Matviyenko.
"I think India and Pakistan will become full SCO members as early as next year, because these very countries display an interest in this organization," Matviyenko told journalists on Wednesday.
"Just imagine what share of the globe's population and the volume of the economies it would make and what influence the SCO would exert on global politics," Matviyenko said.
She also spoke in favor of setting up a national rating agency, arguing that the four leading international rating agencies assess Russia's economy partially.
"They have issued politicized evaluations and made increasingly more biased political decisions rather than impartial economic evaluations. These are private structures that no one elected and which no one entrusted to govern the world and to rate and assess all states. Who's given them this right at all?" Matviyenko said, insisting that this pattern should be changed.
"It's necessary to set up national rating agencies that would be established within the framework of a number of independent states not obeying a mandate of dominating states," she said.
"There are national rating agencies in China, and we should start setting up a powerful national rating agency as soon as possible, and then we will get an impartial picture and impartial evaluation rather than ratings adapted to interests of other states," she said.
These rating agencies seek to "bankrupt a country, put it on its knees, and lower its rating so as to reduce its investment appeal," she said.
This trend is obvious, and the countries making up BRICS are also actively discussing this idea, she said.