The strategic plan for the development of Kazakhstan until 2025 should help to make a qualitative change in the country's economy.
This opinion was expressed by Minister of National Economy Timur Suleimenov during the expert discussion of the document.
Presenting the document, the minister noted that the Strategic Development Plan until 2025 replaces the Development Plan until 2020, as its main tasks were achieved.
The main goal of the new document is to achieve a qualitative and sustainable growth of the economy leading to an improvement in the living standards of people comparable with the OECD countries.
“Whole work on writing the draft plan was conducted during 2017 with the participation of the expert community. Now we are at the final stage of preparation of this document. The state places various priorities on this or that time period of our development. This priority was set in the Nation Plan and, obviously, Strategic Plan-2025 is one of the tools for implementing the Nation Plan and Strategy-2050. To achieve a new model of economic growth, we decided to focus on seven key reforms and continue implementing the 7 system policies,” Suleimenov said.
The document envisages implementation of seven reforms aimed at developing human capital, increasing the productivity of existing sectors of the economy, reducing the role of the state in the economy and barriers to doing business, creating a favorable investment and business climate, increasing the country's GDP through economic growth of regions, establishing a united nation of strong and responsible people, as well as increasing the role of central state and local executive bodies as initiators and agents of changes in the country.
The minister noted that, in general, the implementation of the Strategic Plan should contribute to a qualitative change in the country's economy.
“We must focus on a new quality of the economy, not only on expansion of the extraction of natural resources or the production of certain goods, but also on quality, because exports are one of the key drivers of the new model,” Suleimenov said.
Kazakhstan is the 51st largest export economy in the world and the 48th most complex economy according to the Economic Complexity Index (ECI).
The country has an export-oriented economy which is highly dependent on shipments of oil and related products (73 percent of total exports). Other exports include ferrous metals, copper, aluminum, zinc and uranium.
Main imports are electronics, machinery and mechanical appliances (25 percent of total imports), mineral products (15 percent), transport equipment (12 percent) and base metals and related products (10 percent).
In 2016, Kazakhstan exported $36.8 billion and imported $25.1 billion, resulting in a positive trade balance of $11.6 billion.
By Kamila Aliyeva for AzerNews.
