ASTANA (TCA) — During his meeting with representatives of business circles of South Korea in Seoul on November 10, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev offered Korean companies a platform for projects in the special economic and industrial zones in Kazakhstan, the president’s press service reported.
Nazarbayev invited the Korean companies to actively participate in the process of mass privatization of state enterprises in Kazakhstan, in the forthcoming international trade exhibition “EXPO-2017: Future Energy” in Astana and in the work of the Astana International Financial Centre.
Nazarbayev stressed that the Republic of Korea is one of the key partners of Kazakhstan in East Asia; the total inflow of Korean investment in Kazakhstan since independence has reached about 9 billion dollars.
The President of Kazakhstan noted the decline of bilateral trade in 2015, caused by a number of external factors and objective reasons.
“Under these circumstances, it is important to give new impetus to the development of our economic cooperation. Promising areas of cooperation are energy, agriculture, engineering, construction, finance and investment, logistics and transport system,” Nazarbayev said.
Kazakhstan now has 465 joint ventures with South Korean capital, and during the last three years 14 investment projects worth over 160 million dollars have been implemented.
Nazarbayev also said that during his visit the fruitful talks with the President of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, were held, during which they discussed new opportunities to expand business cooperation, including the development of Kazakhstan’s transport infrastructure and the prospects of the Eurasian Economic Union market entry.
“We talked about the ways of creating a free trade zone with the Eurasian Economic Union. Kazakhstan, which in the current year chairs the EEU, welcomes the willingness of Korea to enter into that area; it would be good for all of us, and we will promote that idea,” the President of Kazakhstan said.
