Azernews.Az

The Kazakh government is doing everything possible to increase the investment attractiveness of the country, Minister of Industry and New Technologies Asset Isekeshev said on June 17.

"In general, today 171 billion U.S. dollars of foreign direct investment (gross inflows) are attracted to the economy of Kazakhstan, 48 percent or 81.6 billion of which were attracted in the last four years," Isekeshev said, during his speech in the Foreign Ministry at the roundtable on the protection of foreign investors' rights and the introduction of the institution of investment Ombudsman in Kazakhstan.

According to him, in particular $22.5 billion (gross inflows) were attracted for the last year, which is above all of the indicators of the recent years (for example, seven percent more than in 2011 (21 billion dollars).

"Today the structure of attracted investments is changing. For example, more than 40 percent of all investments are attracted in the manufacturing industry. Also investments in construction increased for 1.5 times in comparison with the previous year, which amounts one billion dollars. Investment in electricity increased for 1.3 times, amounting to 260 million dollars," Isekeshev said.

According to him, the work on more than 400 initiatives of foreign investors from 80 countries is being carried out; more than 80 projects of them worth about $10 billion have been realized.

"Today, about 8 000 companies with foreign capital, as well as the companies included in the list of Fortune-500 such as Chevron, Siemens, Microsoft, General Electric, Coca-Cola, Danone and Henkel are already active in Kazakhstan," the official said.

According to him, Kazakhstan holds 49th place out of 185 in the World Bank's Doing Business 2013 rating (rose seven places in comparison with 2012, when the country was holding 56th place), considerably ahead of many CIS countries.