Share of SMEs in Kazakhstan's GDP stagnant for 7 years

The share of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kazakhstan’s GPD has not been growing lately, Tengrinews reports citing the press-service of Kazakhstan’s National Chamber of Entrepreneurs.

"The share of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kazakhstan’s GPD has not grown past the 20% threshold over the past seven years," Deputy Chair of Kazakhstan’s National Chamber of Entrepreneurs Gulnar Kurbanbayeva said.

“We have repeatedly discussed this with the Government. Even in the last 4 years when active implementation of state-run programs like Business Road Map-2020, Program of Accelerated Industrial-Innovative Development, Productivity-2020 and many other similar projects has been taking place and huge amounts of funding has been allocated - our entrepreneurs have been studying abroad for free (at the state’s expence) and getting advice from leader marketing and management experts - the share of SMEs in the GDP still have not grown over the past 7 years. We are still at the same level of 18-20%,” she continued.

The Chairwoman called to review the distribution of state subsidies. "The money and resources that are allocated is not the key point here, it is the efficiency of their distribution that matters. It is not enough for our development institutions to just take the money and distribute it somehow. They should identify the businesses and the sectors where the money can go" and produce the most effect, she elaborated, adding the her chamber were monitoring all the existing state-run development projects and analysing their efficiency.

In his State-of-the-Nation Address President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev said that by 2050, the SMEs had to constitute at least 50% of Kazakhstan’s GDP against of the current 20%. For instance, in Germany, their share makes 57%, in the UK – 52%, in the USA – 52%.

As of January 1, 2014, there were over 870 thousand SMEs registered in Kazakhstan. They employed a total of more than 2.6 million people.

Writing by Assel Satubaldina, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina