Almaty companies win quarter of all Kazakhstan's state procurenment contracts

Over 25 percent of Kazakhstan’s state procurement orders (goods and services purchased by the government and funded from the state budget) fall on Almaty companies, Tengrinews.kz reports citing Almaty Akim (Mayor) Akhmetzhan Yessimov as saying during presentation of the State Order-2013 campaign. Akim noted that the share of local content has increased 2.5-fold since the beginning of the campaign 4 years ago. The government has singed contracts totally worth 777 billion tenge ($5.18 billion) with local companies. 15 industrial companies have received financial support from the state. The Entrepreneurship Support Center was launched in Almaty in 2012. Yessimov reminded that the city remains a major non-extracting donor of the country (the main generator of budget revenues among non-extracting zones). Head of Samruk-Kazyna National Welfare Fund Umirzak Shukeyev added that during tender the priority in the state orders is given to Kazakhstan producers; all possible preferences have been created for them. In particular, long-term procurement has been introduced for Kazakhstan companies that are still at the initial stage of establishment. The duration of such contracts makes up to 10 years. Shukeyev added that the Fund continues the work on optimization of the electronic procurement system. A pilot version of the project has already been launched and the system will be fully introduced in January 2013. Besides, a list of 50 thousand foreign-made goods has been drawn to consider which of the items could be successfully produced locally to replace the imported ones. 2 thousand goods were selected for local production in Kazakhstan. Almaty Akim and head of the Fund signed a memorandum on effective measures in four directions: development of the real estate market, support to small and medium business, increasing local content in national companies’ procurement, implementation of innovative and infrastructure projects. By Dmitriy Khegai