Kazakh, Canadian trade turnover reaches $3 bln
By Aynur Jafarova
The trade turnover between Kazakhstan and Canada reached $3 billion in 2013.
This was noted at a meeting held between Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerlan Idrisov and a delegation of the Canadian parliament, which is on a visit to Astana, on September 10.
The delegation was led by Co-chair of the Kazakhstan-Canada Parliamentary Friendship Group, Chairman of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources of Canadian House of Commons Leon Benoit, and included the representatives of both houses of the Canadian parliament and all the major federal political parties.
The sides underscored positive trends in the Kazakh-Canadian trade and economic cooperation, and investment partnership, and mulled the issues of bilateral cooperation in various areas.
Special attention was paid to the development of interparliamentary dialogue through the Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (PNND).
Canada is the main trading partner of Kazakhstan among the states in both North and South Americas.
Over the past five years, the trade turnover between the two countries has increased four-fold to reach $3 billion.
Currently, about 100 joint ventures with authorized capital of over $60 million are registered in Kazakhstan. The volume of direct investments from Canada into Kazakhstan's economy since 1993 has exceeded $6 billion.
In 2012, Canada entered the list of Kazakhstan's leading foreign investors by investing some $743 million in its economy. The major inflow of Canadian investments is directed to Kazakhstan's oil and gas sector and uranium industries.