The Ministry of Trade is structuring work on export development with an emphasis on supporting goods of higher processing. At the same time, the focus will be on agricultural products. Minister of Trade and Integration Arman Shakkaliev announced this at a government meeting.
“First of all, the focus is on China. We set a goal in the medium term to increase the export of finished products by 2.5 times and bring it to $12.5 billion. At the end of 2023, the export of non-commodity goods to China amounted to $5 billion. In-depth work will continue with the countries of the EAEU and Central Asia to increase trade turnover, creating necessary infrastructure for cross-border trade. We are working on increasing the supply of high-margin goods, such as chilled lamb, poultry and offal, which are in high demand in the Middle East. A priority for us is also the markets of the European Union, which are ready to purchase Kazakh food and organic products,” said the head of the Ministry of Trade.
For this purpose, a trading accelerator based on QazTrade will be launched together with professional market participants, which structures niche trade flows. Long-term contracts for the supply of products will be previously concluded, providing for advance payments for the forward purchase of a guaranteed volume of export products. The Ministry of Trade will take over interdepartmental coordination with the involvement of development institutions.
To reduce dependence on external factors, financial measures to support exports will be focused on supporting more deeply processed goods.
“On the basis of the QazTrade Institute, service measures are concentrated, which are received annually by more than 450 companies. Over the past three years, export growth was only for vegetable oils and fats - 2.2 times, fertilizers - 1.7 times, lamb - 4.4 times. According to our calculations, for 1 tenge spent on export support, there are 500 tenge of export revenue. At the same time, the average annual volume of support for service goods and services is about 2.3 billion tenge (or $5 million), or 0.02% of the volume of non-resource exports,” noted Arman Shakkaliev.
He also said that at the beginning of May, a QazTrade trade representative office was registered in the XUAR (Urumqi). In the United Arab Emirates, Qazaq Trade House began operating on the territory of the national pavilion EXPO Dubai. It is also planned for Kazakh companies to participate in two major exhibitions in China: in the cities of Urumqi and Shanghai.