Ministry of Trade of Kazakhstan: new measures to support exporters are being prepared

Today, on June 22, 2021, the Minister of Trade and Integration Bakhyt Sultanov, conducting a report to the population, announced the tools for cost recovery of exporters.

So, since 2019, a tool for reimbursing the cost of exporters of processed products for the delivery of goods from the manufacturer to the importer has been introduced. Thanks to the support of about 300 enterprises, they began to supply their products over longer distances. For example, the refund helped with the supply of flax and rapeseed to Belgium, and metallurgical products to Japan.

Exporters also receive preferential loans and export insurance. As of today, KazakhExport has insured contracts of more than 200 exporters for almost 300 billion tenge. Through the Development Bank of Kazakhstan, 170 exporters received preferential loans for more than 370 billion tenge.

The Minister also raised the issue of the effectiveness of the activities of national institutions to promote non-primary exports.

As he stressed, the increase in the authorized capital of KazakhExport directly affects the growth of non-resource exports. Thus, the formed authorized capital in the amount of 105.1 billion tenge allowed to provide export revenue in the amount of 326.3 billion tenge, or the efficiency was 1 to 3.

So, in 2019, domestic products were exported to 29 countries around the world. There are new export countries - Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United States and South Korea. In 2020, the companies have new export countries-Mexico, Taiwan, Israel, France, Estonia, and Canada.

Moreover, answering the question whether any other export support measures are being developed, the minister said that in order to increase the volume of supplies of Kazakhstani goods and services to foreign markets, 16 priority types of products have been identified, with a forecast of an increase in exports by $13.5 billion by 2025, which is 75% of the overall goal for export growth. To this end, the Ministry has planned 31 investment projects and a targeted package of incentives for foreign investors, including measures to further promote finished products to foreign markets.

"In the course of working with business, we have identified one of the main barriers to the development of exports: the return of value-added tax. To avoid excessive regulation and long processing times for VAT refund applications, we propose to introduce an information system for VAT administration based on Blockchain technology for exporters of processed products and reduce the time to 2 weeks, " the minister added.

The development of the Eurasian Commodity Distribution System and cross-border hubs will help to form a special ecosystem of trade turnover based on the ORC and cross-border hubs. The main "growth points" will be the Khorgos junction (ICBC and Khorgos Eastern Gate) on the border with China and the Central Asia ICPP on the Kazakh-Uzbek border. Also what are they called? "Alatau", "Kyzylzhar" and "Eurasia" will be created on the border with Kyrgyzstan and Russia.

According to the minister, a mechanism for subsidizing the remuneration rate for financing export operations, provided with insurance protection, as well as increasing the representation of Kazakhstan on the world stage, will also be introduced. Active work has been started to involve foreign institutions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan for the proactive promotion of non-primary exports.