Kazakhstan attracts unprecedented amount of investments

Investments into Kazakhstan's fixed capital in the first quarter of 2019 amounted to 2.1 trillion tenge (annual increase by 11.1 percent), which is a record inflow for the history of Kazakhstan, Trend reports citing ranking.kz
An important part of the investment activity is the growing amount of foreign investments. In 1Q2019, the volume of foreign investments into fixed capital totaled 770.5 billion tenge (601.6 billion tenge in 2018), which accounts for 36.2 percent of the investments portfolio.
Nursultan Nazarbayev, first president of Kazakhstan, has set a target of steady economy growth, which requires the volume of investments into fixed capital to reach 30 percent of GDP, with the main source to be foreign investors, the news report says. In 2018, the investments into fixed capital totaled 18.9 percent of GDP, while the gross flow of foreign direct investments totaled $24.3 billion with an annual increase of 15.8 percent.
The new government formed on February 25,2019, is working to increase the effectiveness of the foreign investments attraction into national economy, reads the news report. Main events to help develop Kazakhstan’s investment image in the months since the formation of the new government include the conversion of the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC) into regional investment hub, creation of the coordinating council and transfer of KazakhInvest under the management of the AIFC.
Kazakhstan's Prime Minister Askar Mamin is appointed as investment ombudsman for coordination and successful cooperation with investors as well as for addressing current problems.
AIFC is set up as a unified center for coordination is set to attract foreign investments and promote Kazakhstan’s investment image. From now on, all investments will go through AIFC to be then distributed among key market players. This will help to maximize the effect of the attracted investments to obtain the targets set by Nursultan Nazarbayev, say the news report.
"It is important that no additional funding is needed to create investment hub. In fact, these changes will allow budget expenditures to be optimized in the course of coordinating cooperation between various organizations," said Kairat Kelimbetov, the Governor of Astana International Financial Center.
In April 2019, eight memorandums and agreements were signed at the meeting between President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and President of South Korea Moon Jae-in.
'Korea is among main investors in Kazakhstan. In 2018, the total volume of South Korean investments totaled $478.9 million," the report said.