BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 15. Swiss companies are exploring the potential of the Kazakhstan's market, Ambassador of Switzerland to Kazakhstan Salman Bal told Trend.
"Switzerland's companies are active in many different fields. We see important potential in various areas. It is important to explain the Kazakh market and its specific potential to the Swiss private sector," he said.
According to him, most Swiss companies are small and medium-sized enterprises – despite being world leaders in their respective field of activity, they sometimes don't have enough resources to evaluate the chances of remote new markets.
"This is where our Embassy comes into the play: our role is to help Swiss companies to understand the peculiarities of the Kazakh economy," the ambassador said.
Salman Bal noted that the dynamics in the trade relations between Switzerland and Kazakhstan are good, and the trend is positive.
"In 2022 Switzerland’s exports to Kazakhstan reached 357 Swiss franks. The main share of the exports were pharmaceuticals (65 percent), followed by watches and precision instruments (19 percent) and machines (6 percent). In the first 8 months of 2023 we noticed an increase of 6 percent in Swiss exports to Kazakhstan. Switzerland’s imports from Kazakhstan reached 344 million Swiss frank in 2022 and consisted mainly of energy sources (excluding gold trade)," Salman Bal said.
Switzerland is among the top 3 investors in Kazakhstan, after the Netherlands and the US. The volume of Swiss direct investment in Kazakhstan since 2005 has exceeded $31 billion.