BAKU, Azerbaijan, Oct. 10
Trend:
Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Askar Mamin listed the measures taken by the government to retain existing investors, Trend reports citing Kazakh media.
"In order to further stimulate investment activity, the government was tasked with bringing the volume of investments in fixed capital to 30 percent of GDP, and the volume of gross inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) to $30 billion by 2025 (in the National Development Plan for the next four years and the election program of the Nur Otan party)," Mamin said responding to the deputy's request. "The government is implementing systemic measures aimed at achieving target indicators and ensuring a targeted approach to attracting high-quality investments, as well as improving the country's investment climate."
According to him, in order to retain existing investors, stimulate reinvestment and protect the interests of investors, special advisory bodies function, within which proposals of investors are discussed and decisions are made on their problematic issues.
In particular, the Council of Foreign Investors has been operating under the chairmanship of the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (since 1998).
On August 26 this year, a working meeting of the president with the council members was held, during which he emphasized significant progress in resolving most of the issues reported by the members:
- proposals were supported to eliminate the discriminatory approach in calculating the penalty for emissions from gas flaring, as well as to optimize the threshold for bringing businesses to criminal liability for tax violations (on July 2, 2021, these norms were legislated);
- a new investment tool was jointly developed - an improved model contract, which will provide legal protection and stability of investments and will be applied to all geological basins, providing fiscal and other preferences (depending on the categories of projects);
- an interdepartmental front office is being created for operational interaction with foreign investors in the oil and gas industry on the basis of the "one window" principle.
"The Institute of the Investment Ombudsman functions under my chairmanship (since 2015), which allows to regulate and resolve emerging investment disputes before appealing to courts, which helps to identify controversial issues at an early stage. Reducing the involvement of foreign investors in litigation and arbitration disputes is one of the key criteria for improving the investment attractiveness of the country," concluded Mamin.