Ambassador of Kazakhstan in Italy speaks of trade turnover between the countries, Kazakhstanis in Italy

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Kazakhstan to Italy Andrian Yelemessov spoke to Tengrinews correspondent in Milan about the relations between Kazakhstan and Italy and Kazakhstani citizens in the European country.

According to the Ambassador, Italy ranks third after Russia and China in the list of merchandise exporters of Kazakhstan. Italian politicians call Kazakhstan Italy's main partner in Central Asia and a major partner in the Eurasian Economic Union, he added.

"We have a very good trade turnover. Kazakhstan's trade turnover with the EU is 55 billion euros, and 17 billion of this amount falls on Italy. In 2012, trade turnover equaled to 16.4 billion euros, in 2013 - 16.2 billion, in 2014 - 17 billion euros. A lot of companies are involved in Kazakhstan, Kazakh small and medium enterprises have, too, started working with Italy. The main area are oil and gas, construction of roads, services, production of food,” he said.

Yelemessov noted that Kazakhstanis traveled to Italy for fashion products “worth between 10 and 5,000 euros.”

"Relations in the fields of pharmacy and engineering are also actively developing," he added. Yelemessov said that technologies of very different companies are used in the county's meat industry and the beverage industry. 

The ambassador added that Kazakhstan had recently started using Italian land levelers in rice cultivation. "The lands are uneven in Kazakhstan. When planting rice, large amounts of water is used. By leaving the fields uneven we lose a lot of water, tons of it,” he said.

According to the Ambassador, about a thousand Kazakhstanis live in Italy, including students, tourists and families that have moved there. 

“There are many tourists and students here. Some people move here with their families, we know several families who have purchased apartments and are living in them permanently. Property prices are rather high here. (...) For example, here you can find a nice villa for a million euros, for 10 million euros. But I can say that Kazakhstanies are among those buying housing in Italy," the Ambassador said.

"Kazakhstani girls come, marry Italians and stay here. They live here for decades, but are in no hurry to change their citizenship. They understand that Kazakhstan is a stable country with a great future, and they can come back at any time, while many Italian citizens are not confident in the future of their country,” Yelemessov said.

He admitted that sometimes there Kazakhstani citizens get in trouble in Italy. As most of the visitors do not go register at the consulate immediately upon arrival, diplomats learn about them when they start having problems. According to the ambassador, these are mainly incidents of theft of bags or damage to leased vehicles.

"When our citizens have problems, they come to us, we certainly help them. There were court trials, more than once we pulled our citizens out of trouble,” Yelemessov said. “There are two citizens of Kazakhstan jailed in local prisons, both for murder. As far as I remember, a prison term of one of them is coming to an end. We meet them, pre-writing a consular query. We help as we can," he said.

Reporting by Roza Yessenkulova, writing by Dinara Urazova