Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

Kazakhstan has created favorable conditions for small and medium-sized businesses.

This remark was made by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev at a government meeting in Astana on August 6.

"We want to widely develop small and medium businesses. Today, our loans' rates are below the level of inflation," he said.

Speaking at the meeting, Board Chairman of Kazakhstan's Baiterek National Managing Holding, Kuandik Bishimbayev said unprecedented conditions have been created in the country for small and medium-sized businesses.

"Today, Kazakhstan has created unprecedented conditions, namely: lending for 10 years at the rate of 6 percent of funding. Now our task is to bring effectively these funds to small and medium-sized businesses together with the second-tier banks. And we are working on it," he said.

Kazakhstan allocated 100 billion tenge ($ 1 = 182.3 m) from the National Fund to support small and medium-sized businesses. It was decided to fund 248 projects worth 62.4 billion tenge for three months of the program's implementation.

"Out experts estimates that some 2,700 small and medium-sized businesses will be supported in the framework of the implementation of this program, the amount of tax revenue will additionally amount to about 1.5 trillion tenge. Some 5,500 permanent working places will be created in the manufacturing industry," he said.

Later, Nazarbayev said businessmen should enter spontaneous trade markets to restore order there.

"There are hundreds of thousands of illegal markets in Kazakhstan. Our businessmen can deal with this profitable business and build covered, civilized shopping centers," the president said.

About 20-30 percent of the funds from the informal trade are not transferred to the country's budget.

"I told the governors and mayors to close all non-organized markets in the country that it is necessary to rapidly provide businessmen with land, to include them in the free economic zone, to exempt from taxes to restore order," he said.

Nazarbayev went on to say that Kazakhstan's economy should be developed despite the external risks.

"The situation in the world economy and the CIS requires close regional and global attention," he said. "Therefore, today we should first analyze the current policy and work out new response measures, given the current conditions."

Nazarbayev also gave instructions to relevant government bodies to construct warehouses on the coast of the Persian Gulf and the Pacific.

"The possibility of construction of free warehouses should be considered now in the Persian Gulf and on the Pacific coast due to the fact that we are completing the railroad toward the south through Iran, and under the leadership of China - on the port of Lianyungang," he said.

Earlier, the parties planned to open the main part of the Kazakh-Chinese terminal in the port of Lianyungang, implementation of complex of commercial and marketing activities on attracting and reorientation of the export and transit cargo flow from South-East Asian countries through the Chinese port.

The country is expected to increase export and transit container transport by 2015.