Kazakhstan and Czech Republic to sign agreements worth $250 million

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev and President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus held a joint briefing after their meeting, Tengrinews.kz reports citing the President’s press-service. Nazarbayev said that the Czech Republic was an important partner of Kazakhstan in the European Union. “Our countries have complementary economies. Kazakhstan’s resources and Czech engineering technologies can jointly worked for development of mutually-beneficial cooperation. Historically close ties and a common vector of contemporary development are uniting the people of our countries. We have performed simiral economic reforms in the last decade. Czech experience in this area is interesting for Kazakhstan,” President said. President said that the commodities turnover between the two countries made over $800 million in 2011. “There are around 20 representative offices of Czech companies and 76 joint companies in Kazakhstan. Today’s meeting will further boost development of cooperation between our countries. We are to planing to bring the commodities turnover between Kazakhstan and the Czech Republic to $1 billion. Kazakhstan is currently implementing the industrial-innovative program and we are invite Czech companies to take part in its implementation. On October 24 we will hold a business forum that will include signing tens of new commercial projects worth over $250 million. This will allow to significantly expand the interstate cooperation. I’m sure that my visit will strengthen the partnership between our countries,” Nazarbayev said. He added that Kazakhstan created exceptional preferences for investors working in innovations and industries. President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus said that Kazakhstan President’s visit had an great strategic value for enhancement of the relations between the two countries. “It has been long since our last bilateral meeting in 2004 and evidently there is a need to continue the talks. We consider Kazakhstan a strategically important partner and are interested in enhancement of cooperation. We would like to develop the economic relations: there is a high potential for their growth today. Kazakhstan is a dynamically growing county and I am sure that our relations will expand,” Klaus said. He stressed that there are no serious unsolved issues between the Czech Republic and Kazakhstan. The negotiations resulted in signing of inter-departmental Agreements on cooperation in military, healthcare and medical science, as well as the Agreement between East-Kazakhstan oblast and Plzen area on trade and economic, cultural and humanitarian and scientific and technical cooperation, the press-service writes. Nursultan Nazarbayev arrived in the Czech Republic with the first official visit on October 23. The visit will include the President’s meeting with Czech top management and his participation in the opening of Kazakhstan-Czech business forum.