Kazakhstan employs 32,000 foreign nationals who are divided into four categories by their professional skills, said Vice Minister of Health and Social Development Daulet Argandykov. According to him, category one consists of top managers and assistants, category two includes heads of departments, category three is comprised of specialists with higher education and category four is composed of skilled workers. Category three makes up 44 percent of migrant workers, while skilled workers amount to 25 percent. The quota for attracting foreign specialists is 0.7 percent of the economically-active population. The largest shares of the foreign workforce quota fall on China (23 percent), Turkey (13.14 percent) and India (4 percent). Forty-four percent of migrants are involved in the construction industry, 14 percent are engaged in mining and processing and 5 percent work in the manufacturing industry. “There are certain disadvantages of the existing procedure for attracting foreign specialists, primarily due to the long-lasting procedures and bureaucracy, with these procedures not always meeting the expectations of the economy,” said Argandykov.
In light of the installation of automated electronic weighing arches for trucks, the amount of fines in the current year exceeded 1.3 billion tenge (US$7.2 million), said First Deputy Minister for Investment and Development Zhenis Kassymbek. Thirteen weighing arches were installed this year as part of a pilot project. The main objective was to ensure the transparency of vehicle control on the national roads, said Kassymbek at a briefing in the Central Communications Service. In his words, the project has proved itself. More than 1.3 billion tenge (US$7.2 million) in fines was collected during this period, which is far more than from the stationary posts.
Kazakhstan is interested in developing cooperation with Japan in hybrid and electric vehicle production, said Prime Minister Karim Massimov.He made the remarks at the fifth meeting of the Kazakh-Japanese Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation. “Japan has high tech, Kazakhstan has natural resources and hardworking people,” Massimov said. In his words, working together will provide a certain result in sectors, such as developing cooperation in the nuclear and automotive industries. Moreover, the countries have the potential for cooperation in the space industry, agriculture and other spheres.
