Focus on small and medium-sized business: Nazarbayev

President Nursultan Nazarbayev has spoken about the strategic importance of small and medium-sized business in Kazakhstan at the Foreign Investors Council (FIC) meeting, Tengrinews reports.

“Large enterprises with 30-40 thousand workers are not flexible. Now it is time for small and medium-sizeed business. I read in the news yesterday that the Chinese are using 3D printers to construct houses. They can build 100 square meters in 3 days using the technology. This is the direction business has taken. We are not talking about large-scale businesses. If a person opens a business with 5, 10, 50 employees and if there are many of those small businesses with flexible production that can easily move from one type of work to another and survive in a competitive environment, then that is exactly what we need, ” Nazarbayev said at the meeting.

The Head of the State admitted that Kazakhstan has initially heavily relied on production and sales of raw material and it was not the best strategy to follow. “But we should not be sprinkling ashes one our heads, but should view the natural resources as our wealth. We should develop other things based on sales and export of raw materials,” the President added.

He urged the participants of the FIC to rely on domestic investments.

“We've advanced into the period when you can start helping the country’s development with domestic investments,” Nazarbayev concluded.

Reporting by Renat Tashkinbayev