Nazarbayev discusses economic development with Akhmetov

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev met with Prime-Minister Serik Akhmetov, Tengrinews.kz reports citing the President’s official website. The meeting was also attended by head of the Presidential Administration Karim Massimov and his depty Bakhyt Sultanov. During the meeting Prime-Minister reported on the country’s social and economic development and measures taken for retaining the growth pace of economy, the website wrote. “Last year’s nominal GDP of the country was 1.4 trillion tenge ($9.3 billion) below the target. The economic growth made 5 percent instead of the expected 6 percent. Nevertheless, we believe that the growth was good. Besides, decrease of demand and global prices of major exported metallurgic and mining goods influenced the GDP growth and the budget incomes of Kazakhstan. Considering these results, we plan to update the (three year) budget, as we expect that this year it will be around 495 billion tenge ($3.3 billion) short of the target. Meanwhile, are working to increasing the budget incomes and will take all the necessary measures to improve the situation,” Akhmetov said. Nazarbayev stressed the necessity to clearly define the budget incomes to make the budget balanced and efficient and gave a range of instructions on the issues they discussed.