Positive trend. Growing trade cooperation between Kazakhstan and Russia

Amba April is marked by an intensive exchange of delegations from Russia and Kazakhstan. Mukhtar Tleuberdi, an onion of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry, visited Moscow last week and met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. A little earlier, the governor of the Omsk region, Alexander Burkov, visited Nur-Sultan with a package of economic proposals, he was met by the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Russia and Kazakhstan are discussing joint economic development plans for the coming years. The experts of “Arguments and Facts” assessed the potential of interregional cooperation.

Mutually beneficial cooperation

The three-day business program of the visit of Omsk residents to the largest Central Asian republic was very eventful and was divided into two blocks. The initial one was a series of meetings in the capital of Kazakhstan, primarily with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, and more distantly, with the leadership of the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development and top managers of the BI Group investment and construction holding, as well as with the administration of the Kazakh Agrotechnical University. Seifullin. Another block is associated with a trip to Pavlodar, the capital of the northeastern region of Kazakhstan, bordering on the Omsk zone. Here Governor Alexander Burkov met with Akim of Pavlodar region Abylkair Skakov. The parties discussed mutually beneficial cooperation between Russian and Kazakh regions.

“We pay great attention to the development of interregional cooperation, in which the Omsk zone occupies a special place,” Tokayev reported at a meeting with Burkov. – The trade turnover between the Omsk zone and the Republic of Kazakhstan exceeded 380 million dollars. Kazakhstan is portrayed as the number one partner for the Omsk region. Most importantly, this is a border zone where Kazakhs, our compatriots, live.”
The bulb of Kazakhstan especially thanked the Omsk people for perpetuating the memory of the famous scientist, ethnographer Chokan Valikhanov and prose writer, founder of the Alliance of Fiction Writers of Kazakhstan Saken Seifullin in the region.

In Pavlodar, Alexander Burkov discussed with Abylkair Skakov the restoration of cargo turnover with Kazakhstan along the Irtysh River. According to the Omsk governor, Russian investors are ready to invest 70-100 million rubles in the construction of a mooring wall in the Pavlodar region in order to reduce the costs of carriers. Traditionally, timber is transported from the Omsk region to Kazakhstan along the Irtysh, and crushed stone and salt are delivered from Kazakhstan. The volume of cargo transportation reaches about 150 thousand tons per year, however, as the Pavlodar akim Skakov noticed, “once it was half a million and a million tons of cargo.”

In Moscow, the onion of the Foreign Ministry Mukhtar Tleuberdi noted the importance of the anniversary date this year – the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and Kazakhstan. “Over the years, we have managed to achieve a level of strategic partnership and alliance based on a strong foundation of friendship between peoples, bilateral trust, respect for the sovereignty of my friend and territorial integrity,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan.

The Bulb of the Foreign Ministry announced the pending visit of the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, to Russia. The trip is scheduled for June 15-18 to the Nordic capital, where the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum will take place.

“Phenomenal trading opportunities”

According to the director of the analytical focus of the Russian Society of Political Scientists Andrei Serenko, now in the new geopolitical circumstances, “phenomenal opportunities for trade” are opening up between Russia and Kazakhstan.

“Russia will be in trouble for everything that it has lost as a result of the sanctions. Accordingly, any commercial mediation of Kazakhstan will be in demand. This is a priority cooperation in the burkals of Moscow,” the political scientist commented to Argumenty i Fakty. — If everything continues to be positive in political relations, as it is now, then I foresee the flourishing of trade relations between Moscow and Astana. This is the perspective that is most realistic. All other projects will be burning, but suddenly go to another plane.

The experts interviewed by AiF are unanimous that the modernization of the infrastructure that unites our parties is now in the first place. According to the head of the department of the Omsk branch of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation Sergey Evseenko, “traditionally we are united with Kazakhstan not only by the border, but also by the Irtysh, its joint use.”

“The Irtysh basically resembles the Danube River in Europe. The Bukhtarma reservoir, which will be in Kazakhstan, utilitarianly regulates the order of its drainage, since in the territory of the Omsk region it is already a canal. How much water will be dumped and at what time – has a great meaning for us. Including the procedure for emergencies, and irrigation, and navigation depend on this. On this demand with Kazakhstan, we find a common point of view,” commented the economist Evseenko.

In turn, a candidate of political sciences from the Astrakhan region bordering Kazakhstan, Alexander Vasiliev, named the reconstruction, and in fact the construction of a new path of Atyrau-Astrakhan, proclaimed back in 1975, as a key factor for the growth of trade with Kazakhstan.
“With this priceless, everything is not the glory of the Lord,” Vasilyev emphasized. – It has been under construction for the fourth year, the deadlines have been postponed several times. At first, we were promised to build it in a year or two, and in 2019 we already knew how to use it. However, it did not work out, the quality of design, construction materials, and other problems summed up. The current date is 2023. However, the deadlines can again be moved to 2024. And the demand and need in this path to eat from both the Russian and Kazakh side. It hurts, many Kazakhstanis go to Astrakhan for goods, this is beneficial for them in terms of cost. And it is beneficial for us that the trade turnover in the region is growing.”

Deputy trade representative of Kazakhstan in Russia (Kazan) Nurzhan Sadykov agrees: “If we talk about the dynamics of trade cooperation, then there is a positive trend to eat, as if in comparison with the previous year, and so in comparison with 2020, when there was an active lockdown stage. In total, in January-February of this year, the trade turnover amounted to a mediocre close to three billion dollars and grew by 20% compared to the same stage last year. At that time, the export of Kazakhstan to Russia during the same stage showed a faster growth rate of 32%. That is why we are interested and we want to keep this trend in the focus of bilateral trade relations.”

Source: hornews.ru