Nazarbayev says Kazakhstani companies should compete globally

Nursultan Nazarbayev said that Kazakhstani companies needed to raise their standards and compete internationally, Tengrinews correspondent reports.

"Together with Sir Evans (Member of the Board of Directors Samruk Kazyna JSC Sir Richard Harry Evans) we have created Air Astana from scratch, there was no aviation in Kazakhstan, it practically stopped, it really didn’t exist,” Nazarbayev said at Samruk-Kazyna Transformation Forum.

“With a lot of doubts we created a small company. And today, Air Astana is the leader on the post-Soviet space, it is ready to reach the best world standards and show the best performance in Asia in terms of security, transparency, quality and volume of services," Nazarbayev said.

The president said that companies like KazMunaiGas, a large oil and gas company, and Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, a railway company, were also on a good footing. These three companies are close to the best standards and occupy leading positions in the post soviet space.

"But the point is that they should be competing with the world's best companies, [because] they don't have any competition in Kazakhstan. We have invited you to help us accomplish this task," Nazarbayev said addressing the international experts who attended the forum.

The President said that the Fund was initially created to stimulate the local companies to improve their competitiveness. However with the economic crisis of 2008, the entity was forced to engage in addressing the ensuing problems, so the fund bailed out several of the country's second-tier banks.

"Now is the time the fund returns to the task it was created for," Nazarbayev declared.

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