ASTANA – Director of International Offices at Dubai Chamber Omar Khan called on Kazakhstan businesspeople to create a domestic meat brand at Kazakhstan-UAE Business Forum.
According to Khan, Kazakhstan and United Arab Emirates have cooperation potential in the certified meat product trade using halal standards.
“It is necessary to make Kazakh meat known all over the world. You need to pay attention to marketing, building brand name recognition and determining the price. Kazakh meat is good organic product. Other countries sell it for dollars, when you do it for cents,” Khan said at the forum in Astana on May 22.
“The UAE receives meat from Australia, New Zealand and other distant countries, but for some reasons not from Muslim states. The point is primarily in the cost, knowledge and recognition of the product. You have many talented people and can develop projects with a large added value, including halal products,” the Arab businessman said.
According to Khan, the main problem of Kazakhstan manufacturers is necessary certification.
At the moment, Kazakhstan has only one meat factory with a halal certificate from the UAE in Pavlodar. Deputy Chairperson of Atameken Nurzhan Altayev said Kazakhstan and the Islamic Development Bank are working on a project to create a halal-hub in Kazakhstan. According to him, the project can solve the problem with the export of Kazakh meat.
“Now we need to conduct a halal-certification of our enterprises to deliver products to the UAE. In the future, we need to put a laboratory in Kazakhstan. After that our entrepreneurs won’t need to go to the UAE and bring their experts from there. One laboratory will be enough to certify all the enterprises,” Altayev added.
Approximately 70 UAE businesspeople and more than 500 businesspeople from Kazakhstan took part in the Kazakhstan-UAE Business Forum in Astana, during which national representatives signed economic cooperation agreements.
