BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov. 3
By Klavdiya Romakayeva - Trend:
Kazakhstan offered Uzbekistan 64 more commodity items, which Kazakhstan can supply to the Uzbek market, Trend reports referring to the press service of the Uzbek government.
Prime Minister of Uzbekistan Abdulla Aripov and a delegation from Kazakhstan headed by Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar discussed the current state and prospects of agreements reached at the highest level and topical issues of Uzbek-Kazakh relations.
Minister of Trade and Integration of Kazakhstan Bakhyt Sultanov on his Facebook page reported on the details of these negotiations.
He said this year it was planned to bring the mutual trade turnover to $5 billion, but because of the pandemic, it was difficult to do this. The volume of mutual trade for nine months decreased by 16.5 percent.
At the same time, Kazakhstani exports decreased by only a small percentage, but imports from Uzbekistan decreased by 40 percent.
Sultanov offered his colleagues from Uzbekistan 64 more commodity items, which Kazakhstan can supply to the Uzbek market. These are various pipes, rolled metal products, cars, chemical and petrochemical products, mechanical engineering, pharmaceuticals and the food industry.
“We hope that the KazakhExport office which opened last year in Tashkent will help in the promotion by raising export trade finance from local banks for the purchase of Kazakhstani goods and providing its insurance coverage for credit risk.
Today, we have just signed an agreement on cooperation between KazakhExport and the Uzbek Qishloq qurilish bank, providing for financing of trade operations for $3 million,” he said.
The minister outlined that Kazakhstan wants not only to trade, but also to cooperate in entering foreign markets. For this reason, both countries initiated the creation of the International Center for Trade and Economic Cooperation (ICTEC).
“Kazakhstan sees ICTEC not only as a concentration of cross-border wholesale and retail trade facilities with adjacent infrastructure, but also as an important trade and logistics center of the Eurasian commodity distribution system. Wholesale distribution centers (WDCs) and Uzbek agro-logistics centers (ALCs) are also intended to become components of this large system,” he noted.
“Since the start of the ICTEC is still far away, we propose to test some of its elements at our border WDC-ALCs. And by the time the ICTEC is launched, we will be able to build the entire technological scheme for the movement of goods, identify vulnerabilities and fix them,” the minister added.
Sultanov said that the issue of removing barriers was also discussed at the talks.
As of September 2020, the largest volume of foreign trade turnover after China (16.8 percent) and Russia (14.8 percent) falls on Kazakhstan (7.3 percent or slightly more than $2 billion).
---
Follow the author on Twitter: @romakayeva
