ASTANA – Atameken Council of Business Women of Kazakhstan Chairperson Lyazzat Ramazanova recently spoke about women’s entrepreneurship in the nation, as well as the possible financing of women’s business projects through various financial institutions, during a Central Communication Service press conference.
Photo credit: Turar Kazangapov
“There are several financial channels for development of female entrepreneurship, including the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development), the Asian Development Bank and the Damu Fund. To date, the total sum forwarded to support business women in the country is 1.5 billion tenge (US$4.4 million),” she said.
Ramazanova added the majority of business women choose small and medium-sized companies.
“According to official statistics, the population of Kazakhstan today is composed of over 17 million people and more than a half of them (52 percent) are women. Four million women have reached working age and in the previous year, 1,656,493 citizens were registered as small and medium-sized entrepreneurs. Women run 697,355 enterprises and, in general, there are 1.44 million women engaged in business. Therefore, we must help women to establish and develop their businesses,” she said.
The council was founded in July and the positive results of its work were noted.
“The active involvement of women in the sphere of small and medium-sized businesses is needed to improve the economic status of women and to reduce the female unemployment rate, as well as to create a stable middle class society,” said the speaker.
One of the ways to support women‘s entrepreneurship is to increase their involvement in the activities of various associations and professional organisations through the wide dissemination of information about such opportunities, she added.
“Our council is intended primarily to ensure the effective implementation of adopted state programmes in this area. Today, we have established 16 regional councils of business women. We work to increase the competitiveness of females in the labour market, improve the status of the socially-active woman, create new jobs for women and support gender equality in the business environment,” said Ramazanova.
