Expert: agriculture has bright future in Kazakhstan

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ASTANA. KAZINFORM Agriculture has a bright future in Kazakhstan, World Bank's Vice President for Europe and Central Asia Cyril Muller stated in his comments on the President's Address to the Nation of Kazakhstan

"The Address of the President that he pointed out and called this Modernization 3.0, and identified 5 key priorities, I think these priorities are very much a lined with the discussions we have with Kazakhstan with the areas that we were working on with the Government of Kazakhstan. So, for instance, one of the key challenge for Kazakhstan going forward is to diversify to economy. To diversify to economy means creating new enterprises. Why? Because, new enterprises create a lot more new jobs than old enterprises. They also bring dynamism to the economy. In that context is interesting that Kazakhstan has focused much on improvement business climate in the country. And over last few years these improvements, these measures that have been taken have improved Kazakhstan's ranking in Doing Business Ranking to now being 35 in a world. Which is a very big improvement and the very good ranking for countries in a region. I think you can always do better so I very much welcome the attention that the President is paying to that area", Cyril Muller said.
According to him it is also truth that a spot of diversifying the economy will give Kazakhstan an ability to forward improve its rankings in the areas or trading with neighboring countries. He notices that more can be done in particular the areas of growth such as agricultural and food, and the services sector can be grown. So this attention on improving business climate, the attention on modernizing higher pass of technology is very much needed.

"You also emphasized macroeconomic stability. A macroeconomic stability is very important, because it anchors the growth potentially of the country over long term. So if you are stable macroeconomic, you will grow more over time and, second thing will also happen will facilitate decisions by investors, by people, to trust that the economy in Kazakhstan will continue to grow over time", Muller underlined.

Emphasis is also made on the need to focus on people, skills, education. An actually the World Bank would just approved to learn to Kazakhstan, a program on Education.

"And that is an area which very much been working with the Government, but also with Society over the last few years. And so what we care about very much on Education is to make sure that primary and secondary education opportunities are available for all people in Kazakhstan so in areas. We also try to make sure that when children educated they have skills that can be used in the economy. So they can find good jobs over time. Then into that focus also it is important to think that these Kazakh citizens should have opportunities to become entrepreneurs and then to create their own enterprises if they wish to do so. We try to also foster innovation the creation of small and medium size enterprises. So on balance I believe strongly that the focus 5 key areas on Modernization 3.0 are very important. I am certain that agriculture has a bright future in Kazakhstan. What I would like to say I ever is that the future - a bright future - mean not be what people normally see with agriculture. The agriculture is sometimes seen with the low technology, low productivity sector. But if you look today in a world, agriculture, but also I think the link much more important to the food industry, is now a very high tech sector as well. So Kazakhstan has some neighbors that had very large needs around food, such as for instance China, so your ability to use your geographic location, a good arable lands that you have and to try to do so in high value products in agriculture. I think this will be a future of Kazakhstan so I always tell people: "Please do not think of agriculture as something that is of low technology or is from the past. It is a big part of the future and in the world today for instance the food industry employee is very large employer in the world, one of the large is actually", Cyril Muller concluded.

 

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