ASTANA, Kazakhstan, April 22. Kazakhstani companies are showing interest in participating in the construction of infrastructure and telecommunications projects in Afghanistan, said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Economy Serik Zhumangarin during a meeting with the Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Afghanistan, Najibullah Haqqani, Trend reports.
As part of the meeting, Zhumangarin also proposed joint participation in the laying of optical cables during the construction of a section of the new railway line from Torgundi to Herat, and he, in the meeting with Afghan Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar, noted that the establishment of a regional center is aimed at strengthening socio-economic and business cooperation between Central Asian countries and Afghanistan.
“On April 14, a group of specialists, including geologists and engineers from Kazakhstan, arrived in Afghanistan. With the support of Afghanistan's Ministry of Mining and Petroleum, they visited a number of mining sites,” said the press service of the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan.
In his turn, Kazakhstan’s Deputy Minister of Industry and
Construction, Iran Sharkhan, stated that specialists have collected
130 kg of ore samples from potential deposits in Nuristan Province,
which contain beryllium, lead, and zinc.
He also added that the samples will be sent to Kazakhstan for more
detailed analysis in laboratories, and after receiving the results,
the Kazakh side is ready to enter into deeper negotiations for
further development of the deposits.
To activate the actions outlined in the roadmap, Zhumangarin proposed to the Afghan Deputy Prime Minister to open a Kazakhstan trade house in Kabul. Abdul Ghani Baradar supported the proposal, noting that the Afghan side would also like to open its own trade house in Kazakhstan.
“It was also proposed by the Kazakh side to consider the possibility of supplying buses from the Kazakh company ‘QazTehna’ in case the Afghan side is interested. The new trade houses will contribute to the activation of mutual investments in various areas of cooperation,” the press service added.
In the course of the meeting with the Minister of Trade and Industry, Nuriddin Azizi, the possibilities for diversifying the mutual trade turnover between the two countries were discussed. At the end of last year, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan signed a roadmap to increase trade turnover to $3 billion.
