ASTANA – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan Erlan Idrissov announced Aug. 10 proposals to improve work with foreign investors.
Speaking at a government meeting on the issue, Idrissov suggested creating a pool of investment projects.
“There are a lot of projects and most of them are sector-specific. Therefore, while working with investors, sometimes we face a lack of concreteness. Also, the state bodies have different positions, which lead to difficulties in monitoring the projects. I propose to create a single pool of large investment projects, which would be passed through all related bodies and approved at the investment headquarters under your leadership,” Idrissov said, addressing Prime Minister Karim Massimov.
Secondly, Idrissov proposed using a more targeted approach to choosing foreign investors.
“We try to spread all the projects and find investors worldwide. Although we know that there is a concept of country specialisation. Therefore, we offer to introduce a country-targeted approach through the decision of the investment headquarters. That means that if we need high-precision products, we know which countries specialise in those products. It will allow us to target certain projects only in the [appropriate] countries, while excluding countries that are not involved,” Idrissov said.
In addition, Idrissov noted that it is necessary to develop a unified export and import policy, because marketing is a key issue for investors.
“We have no profound analysis of the export and import policies. In our view, it is a serious obstacle in working with investors. The reason is that any investor before investing money thinks where his products will be sold at the final stage. Our country does not have such market analysis. We believe that the relevant ministries need to seriously work on the development of clear and standard export and import policies,” Idrissov concluded.
In turn, Massimov instructed the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry for Investments and Development to prepare a wider meeting of the investment headquarters shortly in order to make a general decision.
