NUR-SULTAN – Kazakh Prime Minister Askar Mamin encouraged the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council meeting to strengthen the work of the Eurasian Economic Union as Kazakhstan assumed the role of the presidency in the union this year, the Kazakh Prime Minister’s press service reported.
Established in 2015, the Eurasian Economic Union is an economic union of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Speaking at a press conference following the meeting, Mamin said the commission adopted a plan to implement Kazakhstan’s ambitious initiatives that consists of 15 main tasks and 84 measures. This year, 57 measures are planned and the remaining 27 are scheduled for 2022 through 2025.
“President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev sent an address to the heads of the union’s member states, which outlined the main priorities in the year of our country’s presidency. They are formulated taking into account the six years since the creation of the union and the most urgent challenges and opportunities in the new economic and social reality,” said Mamin.
Presiding over the union, Kazakhstan will focus on boosting industrial cooperation, eliminating trade barriers, unlocking the potential of transborder transport connections and logistic hubs as well as efforts to increase digitization.
“The trends that are shaped and intensified by the current crisis, including the displacement and disruption of production and transport chains formed over decades, a stronger focus on holistic digitisation, and tougher competition for capital and markets, are not short-term. They will shape global markets for many years to come and become part of the new economic reality,” said Mamin.
He stressed that the focus areas put forward by Kazakhstan meet the interests of all union members and reflect the importance of an accelerated transformation of the union’s economic, production, trade and institutional basis.
The union members have nearly 17,500 joint projects, and the majority of them (approximately 10,000) are in Kazakhstan.
The meeting was also attended by Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Belarus Roman Golovchenko, Ulukbek Maripov of Kyrgyzstan, Mikhail Mishustin of Russia, Abdulla Aripov of Uzbekistan, Eurasian Economic Commission Board Chair Mikhail Myasnikovich, CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) Executive Committee Chair and Executive Secretary Sergey Lebedev, Eurasian Development Bank Board Chair Nikolay Podguzov and Cuban Ambassador to Russia Julio Garmendia Peña who delivered a video message from his country’s Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz. Acting Moldovan Prime Minister Aureliu Ciocoi joined the meeting online.
The prime ministers also discussed internal and external trade policy, including the ways to improve the use of special protective, anti-dumping and countervailing measures and updating the list of countries using the EAEU unified system of tariff preferences.
In December last year, the heads of states adopted the Eurasian economic integration development strategy through 2025 that lists 11 development priorities with a special focus on digitisation.
