Bakhyt Sultanov: Visit to Baku (continued).

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A regular meeting of the Kazakh-Azerbaijani intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation was held yesterday. This was the first IPC after it was transferred under the co-chairmanship of the Ministry of Trade (previously, the Ministry of Energy was the co-chairman from the Kazakh side).

There were 17 issues on the agenda: We discussed trade, economic, energy, and humanitarian cooperation, and discussed joint steps in the development of communication technologies, transport, and education. In general, all areas of development of our countries.

They discussed possible cooperation in the agro-industrial complex, including the inclusion of Azerbaijani partners in the trade and logistics supply chain. We discussed the development of energy corridors. And, of course, business cooperation between the two countries.

We decided to create a Business Council to strengthen the work of the business and work more actively through mutual Trading houses. The Azerbaijani side even offered to "encourage companies" for working with TD.

In general, it turned out to be a very constructive and productive dialogue. Careful implementation of all the decisions that we have recorded in the Protocol will allow us to get concrete results.

While our meeting was going on, the business was conducting its negotiations. They turned out to be effective. I know that there are contracts for the supply of our furniture products, metal buds, salt to Azerbaijan. Today, entrepreneurs continue their meetings. Kazakh entrepreneurs, by the way, hold meetings with local retail chains. I hope that the number of supply agreements will increase.

Today, the main meeting of the day will also take place - the 10th meeting of the meeting of Ministers of Economy/Trade of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking States.

The interests of all significant world players intersect on the territory of the Turkic-speaking region, which attracts the attention of the entire world community to the region. Our region has a huge workforce - more than 150 million people, a developed transport infrastructure –more than 400 thousand km of roads, more than 30 thousand km of railways. In fact, the territories of the Turkic-speaking countries are a powerful economic corridor connecting Europe with Asia. And it is necessary to develop this potential competently. The task of our states is to create comfortable conditions for attracting investment in advanced sectors of the economy, to stimulate the emergence of new technologies and their active implementation. And the meetings of the Ministers of economy/trade contribute to the promotion of the economic agenda and the expansion of regional cooperation of our association.

I will try to tell you later about what happened at the meeting and how our discussions ended.

More detailed information about the content of questions and discussions can be found at the link https://www.gov.kz/.../mti/press/news/details/253532...