President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev held a working meeting of the Foreign Investors Council under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan in a video conference format. During the event, divided into two sessions, measures to restore economic and investment activity in Kazakhstan in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as issues of developing and increasing the investment attractiveness of the country's oil and gas sector were detailed.
Tokayev expressed gratitude to the companies included in the Council, which in this difficult time for Kazakhstan provided significant support to employees of their businesses, the social sphere and citizens of the country.
According to him, in the pandemic, the state has taken a set of unprecedented measures to support business and the population, which helped reduce the negative consequences of the crisis and avoid a serious economic recession.
The President also pointed out the need for serious transformations and reforms aimed at increasing investment attractiveness, ensuring transparency and predictability of government policies. To achieve these goals, Tokayev put forward a number of proposals and initiatives and outlined the creation of new investment instruments as the first task. For this, in accordance with his instructions, the mechanism of the Strategic Investment Agreement has already been developed to ensure guaranteed stability of the legislative conditions on the part of the state. This year, he noted, protection of investors from corruption pressure has been strengthened.
The President informed the meeting about the new Environmental Code, developed on the basis of the advanced approaches of the OECD member countries. Possibilities of the IT sphere were highlighted, which, in the face of the negative consequences of the pandemic, gave a powerful incentive for the accelerated development of the digital economy.
The importance of developing domestic pharmaceutical industry was underlined.
By 2025, the President said, Kazakhstan expects to increase the share of its own pharmaceutical production in the country to 50%.
Development and improvement of the investment climate in the oil and gas sector were discussed separately. Tokayev pointed to the importance of the timely completion of large oil and gas projects at the Tengiz, Karachaganak and Kashagan fields. In particular, he instructed to timely implement the transition to full-scale development of Kashagan and speed up the gas refinery construction project at this field. The need to increase local content in oil and gas projects was noted.
Tokayev also drew attention to enhancing the investment attractiveness of geological exploration. The Government, together with oil and gas companies were instructed to improve the sectoral regulatory framework, taking into account the current realities and vision for the future development of the industry.
Summarizing his participation in the event, the President assured that all the proposals and requests made during the meeting would be carefully considered in the Government and will be taken under his personal control.
Reported by the Kazakhstanskaya Pravda.
