Bakhyt Sultanov: First news from Paris

Source https://www.facebook.com/bakhyt.sultanov 

Immediately upon arrival in the French capital, he met with the management of Alstom, one of the world leaders in the production of railway transport.

The meeting was organized in advance by our Embassy in France, headed by the head of the mission, Jean Serzhanovich Galiev, in cooperation with KazTrade.

Alstom has been working in our country for a long time, having invested in the creation of an Electric Locomotive Assembly plant in the Nur-Sultan Industrial Park. Full assembly of freight and passenger locomotives, including for export, is carried out here. The development of the Azerbaijani market has recently begun. KazElectroDrivod produces switch drives for the entire railway complex of the country, and unified railway standards in the post-Soviet space create a huge potential for export to these countries.

At the meeting, we agreed to move to a new level of cooperation. We are determined to work together to promote the products of our investors abroad and, thereby, to increase Kazakhstan's non-resource exports. The Ministry of Trade and Integration, through state export support operators (QazTrade and KazakhExport), will provide maximum support for the promotion of products produced at the factories: from identifying potential sales markets to finding counter-partners and reimbursing export costs.

Another point of our strategic cooperation will be to deepen industrial cooperation with local companies and increase the level of localization from the current 30%. Our country has a rich raw material base for establishing the production of high-tech equipment. We can increase the local content at Alstom plants up to 80 percent by supplying cable and wire products, glass, interior parts, wheel sets for locomotives inside Kazakhstan.

And more. Kazakhstan has now begun to pursue a proactive policy of transition to a low-carbon economy. In his Message to the people of Kazakhstan, the Head of state set a clear task and set a deadline: to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

This also coincides with Alstom's strategy aimed at implementing low-carbon projects around the world and in our country. For example, we discussed the possibility of implementing projects in Kazakhstan on the use of hydrogen technology for rolling stock.

During the meeting with the heads of the company, Andrew Deleone and Philip Deller, who are responsible for the implementation of projects in our region, we signed a Memorandum of Cooperation, in which we identified all the above-mentioned areas and tools of interaction.

All these and other issues will be discussed these days in Nur-Sultan. Today, the visit of the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alstom, Mr. Henri Poupard-Lafarge, who has scheduled many meetings with the leadership of the government, departments and companies, begins in Kalakhstan.
I hope all of them will bring new mutually beneficial opportunities both for the company and for our country.
By the memorandum we have indicated a serious interest in cooperation. Now let's start implementing the stated in practice.