BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25
By Jani Babaeva – Trend:
Kazakhstan has managed to maintain positive dynamics in foreign trade despite negative trends this year, the Deputy Chairman of the Senate of the Parliament of Kazakhstan Nurlan Abdirov said during the Government Hour, Trend reports citing Kazinform.
“The topic of our meeting touches on one of the topical areas that are important for the national economy. A properly structured trade policy based on ensuring the active growth of domestic trade, stimulating business to produce high-quality products, focused on the growth of country exports, has become the key to the effective economic development of many countries,” Abdirov said.
He said that the head of state has repeatedly noted the need to strengthen the trade and logistics potential of Kazakhstan, expand sales markets for domestic products and provide conditions for saturating the market with domestic products.
“In his message to the people of Kazakhstan dated September 1, 2021, "The unity of the people and systemic reforms are a solid basis for the country's prosperity", the President set the task of diversifying the economy, expanding the range of goods produced and the geography of exports. Trade in the structure of the economy of Kazakhstan is one of the key sectors, its share in GDP is about 15 percent. This sphere provides work for almost 1.5 million people,” Abdirov said.
According to Abdirov, in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kazakhstan's foreign trade turnover amounted to $86.5 billion, having decreased by 12 percent by 2019. At the same time, exports decreased by 18 percent, imports - by two percent.
Abdirov added that COVID-19 opened up new opportunities for the development of online trading, which is gradually erasing traditional trading formats.
Thus, in 2020 in Kazakhstan, the total volume of purchases on the Internet, including wholesale, retail purchases, as well as services, amounted to 960.8 billion tenge ($), showing an increase in comparison with 2019 by 2.2 times.
The Deputy Chairman of the Senate noted, this year, despite the negative tendencies, Kazakhstan managed to maintain positive dynamics in foreign trade.
“At the end of eight months of 2021, exports grew by 16 percent, imports - by 2.2 percent. The volume of domestic trade in Kazakhstan also increased. Retail trade grew by six percent, while wholesale trade increased by 11 percent,” he noted.