President Nursultan Nazarbayev held the first plenary session of Kazakhstan’s Business Council on February 26, 2010.
As a result, two large state development programs Business Road Map 2010 and Kazakhstan’s Intensified Industrial and Innovation Development until 2015 were approved.
Based on due consideration of the concerns previously expressed by the country’s business community, part of which were voiced once again during the session, a new paradigm of cooperation between domestic businesses and state bodies was unveiled.
Seeking to achieve efficient results, the Kazakhstan government is ready to polish up legal basis and administrative system of the nation, pursuing a well-balanced tax policy and easing access to the credit resources.
In turn, the government expects businessmen to make their personal interests correspond with the interest of increasing public welfare and setting new business standards in Kazakhstan. These include high productive efficiency, usage of innovation technologies, diversification and focus on export activities, to name but a few.
Opening the Business Council’s plenary session, President Nazarbayev noted business development was a basic component in further modernization of the Kazakh economy and evolvement of the country’s human capital assets.
“I am well aware of the fact that today our businessmen face numerous challenges, tackling of which require thorough and consistent approaches. I hope our conversation will let us find proper ways to resolve all pressing questions we raise today,” the President said.
In his speech Prime Minister Karim Massimov stressed that over the last two decades of the nation’s development, the Kazakh market economy and national business have accumulated some significant experience in the abovementioned area.
The number of employees engaged in small and medium sized businesses now exceeds 1.8 million people, which makes roughly a quarter of the nation’s labour force. One third of Kazakhstan’s total GDP is produced by this sector. It is the small and medium sized businesses that create a huge number of workplaces, form the middle class, and ensure the national welfare and prosperity.
The Prime Minister also set forth a list of measures, aimed at guaranteeing the realization of long-term tasks posed by the President Nazarbayev.
The first step implies consecutive elimination of administrative barriers and improving business environment in Kazakhstan. Clear and transparent regulations should be established, leaving no place for corruption or bureaucracy.
The second direction deals with reforming the nation’s law-enforcement agencies, which has already been launched in compliance with the President’s instructions given in his latest state-of-the-nation speech on January 29. Honest businessmen should be confident in their private property being safe, and the courts always ready to protect them, Massimov said.
The third step is aimed at stimulating new business initiatives, which result in the development of competitive production and creation of new jobs in the regions of this large country.
The Prime Minister said the fourth step should be the rehabilitation activities of the currently operating companies.
The last one includes special monitoring processes, destined to control funds allocated by the government. The money, provided by the state to support small and medium sized businesses, should be used for their intended purposes and in most effective way, he added.
Chair of the Kazakhstan’s Business Forum Council Raiymbek Battalov reported on the situation in non-oil and gas sectors of the country, noting the absence of well structured and concerted mechanism of data acquisition and analysis, which should serve as a basis for working out effective programs based upon a single methodology and conformity with other documents.
Serik Akhanov, Chair of the Kazakh Finance Association, presented his view of Kazakh financial sector’s role in the realization of Business Road Map 2020 program.
The main task, in his opinion, is to create due conditions in subsidy assistance and provide guarantees these resources will be sent to the real sector crediting, which in turn will stipulate stable and consistent work of financial sector of the Kazakh economy.
Speaking at the Business Council, Minister of Economy and Budget Planning Bakhyt Sultanov appeared to answer a number of questions that were being asked by the business community earlier. According to the minister, work on elimination of administrative barriers will be exerted in the field of normative legal regulation, supervisory activities of state bodies, and further improvement of regulatory approval system.
Summing up the results of the plenary session, President Nazarbayev tasked the administration to create a web log, where businessmen would be able to ask any question and appeal in case of illegal actions of law enforcement bodies.
He also dwelt upon the issues of Kazakhstan’s further business development, noting Business Road Map 2020 should become a key instrument in reanimation of entrepreneurship activities in the country.
Likewise, working groups are to be created in all the vulnerable sectors, discussed during the meeting. In addition, the Presidential Administration was instructed to replace two earlier existing consultative bodies acting under the aegis of the President, the National Investor Council and Business Council, with a single Business Council under the President of the Republic.
Closing the session, the President noted after the first five years of industrial development new large industrial facilities will appear in Kazakhstan.
“We must believe in our strength and success. I am strongly convinced we will carry out Kazakhstan’s industrialization, boosting innovation and science,” Nursultan Nazarbayev concluded.
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