Kazakhstan continues to attract biggest foreign investments in CIS

[14:39] 17/06/2005, Kazakhstan Today
http://engNews.gazeta.kz/art.asp?aid=304268

Kazakhstan continues to attract biggest foreign investments per capita in CIS. Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, has stated this today, June 17, opening the session of the Foreign Investors Council in Karaganda, KZ-today correspondent reports.

"From 1993 up to the current time the volume of direct foreign investments reached almost $40 billion. Moreover, $4 - $4.5 billion of direct foreign invest since 2001 and in 2004 their volume reached $8.4 billion," - he has observed.

"According to the results of 2004 the volume of investments into the fixed capital, reflecting activities of new production capacities, has surpassed the ten billion USD limit and made 1.53 trillion KZT. It is six times more than in 1998, when the Council was created, and 200 times more than in 1993," - he has stressed.

According to the president of RK, lately there is a tendency towards revival of investment activities in the processing sector. "If in 1998 investments into the fixed capital of the processing industry equalled 44 billion KZT, in 2004 this figure reached 150 billion KZT. There is the same situation with the direct foreign investments."

N. Nazarbayev believes that the dynamically developing economy of Kazakhstan necessitates an extension of national economy limits for the national capital towards new markets. "The Development Bank's concept of accession to markets of the Near Abroad contains such policy."

The Kazakhstan Development Bank considers a number of projects of the Near Abroad countries and studies an opportunity of opening its offices in some CIS states. Besides, the Investment Fund considers several projects from the neighbouring states, in particular, from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Russia, China.

"Many investors realise their projects in Kazakhstan and in other Central Asian countries, therefore it is important to unite efforts for developing the regional economies in a closer integration, economic in the first place."