Bakhyt Sultanov: On mutual trade with Kyrgyzstan

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Yesterday, together with my colleague, First Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Kyrgyz Republic Arzybek Kozhoshev, we spent a fruitful day on the Kazakh-Kyrgyz border. We got acquainted with the situation of cargo transit at the border, and also examined the site of the future industrial trade and logistics complex. Its location is planned in the area of the Karasu-Ak-Tilek road checkpoint, next to which we held the 9th meeting of our Intergovernmental Council at the level of prime ministers of our countries a year ago in the village of Kordai.

The project is important, implemented on behalf of the Head of State. We have been working on it for more than a year. To date, the Kazakh side has reserved 40 hectares of land for ITLC near the Karasu border checkpoint, we are waiting for a decision on the site from the Kyrgyz side. I think all the documentation will be ready by May.

In parallel, we are working on infrastructure issues and attracting potential investors. Both we and the Kyrgyz side have a lot of ideas on industrial cooperation.

Increasing trade turnover is one of the key tasks in bilateral relations. At the end of last year, the trade turnover amounted to a little less than a billion dollars, of which two-thirds are our exports. We can increase these volumes by half: we are currently working on expanding the range of 190 products worth approximately $ 230 million. These are products of pharmaceuticals, chemical industry, metallurgy, construction goods, mechanical engineering…

The Kyrgyz market has demand, we have offers.

We also discussed with A. Kozhoshev new ways of "connecting" our trade interests.

During the inspection of the border, we inspected the effectiveness of our solutions to eliminate queues of import and transit flows of road carriers. Increased cargo control and, as a result, congestion at the border is a long history. We have been actively discussing ways to fix it over the past few weeks. As a result, the Kyrgyz side agreed to ensure the availability of an ESF with a QR code for all goods exported from Kyrgyzstan to the Republic of Kazakhstan. Now on the territory of the Kyrgyz Republic, drivers are even handed out memos that they must issue an ESF before entering the border. Only if there is an ESF for the transported goods and the data of the inspection-drsmorr complexes correspond to it, checks will not be carried out at the border. It will not work to deceive – checkpoints are equipped with modern equipment – scanners that easily recognize unaccounted goods.

The presence of the ESF immediately relieved all the congestion: for two days at the automobile checkpoints (including the busiest one – Kordai), we did not see a cluster of cars.

By the way, with the Kyrgyz first Deputy Prime Minister, we decided to personally monitor the border: we will install monitors in our offices with broadcast from cameras from each PP.

A week later, a regular meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation is scheduled, the range of issues of which is wider. But the goal is the same: we must deepen cooperation with each other as key trade and economic partners of the region. This was also one of the key issues on the agenda of our negotiations.