OREANDA-NEWS  About 3 million tourists from the member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) visited Russia this year - three times more than last year. This was stated by Deputy Secretary General of the SCO Grigory Logvinov at a meeting with the organization's press club.

"The number of tourists from the SCO countries visiting Russia has increased 3 times compared to last year and amounted to three million people," Logvinov said. He also provided statistics on a number of other member countries of the organization. According to him, Uzbekistan was visited by over 2 million tourists from the SCO countries in 2023, and Kazakhstan - over 700 thousand.

"Cooperation in the field of tourism is becoming increasingly important on the SCO agenda," Logvinov said. "Tourist trips, contacts between people, mutual acquaintance with each other's culture, history and tradition are the soil on which mutual trust and respect between peoples and states grow." He called the SCO countries "a unique constellation of bright, ancient, original cultures, philosophical, religious and ethical teachings, outstanding architectural monuments and unique landscape beauties."

Currently, the SCO is working to create conditions for unhindered travel between the participating countries of the organization, issues of restoring direct flights, compatibility of national payment systems, as well as improving insurance mechanisms are being resolved, Logvinov said.