Russia and China lead Kazakhstan's partners rating

Russia leads the rating of Kazakhstan’s partners, Tengrines.kz reports citing the research of Rating.kz agency. The rating is based on three criteria: frequency of the top level meetings of Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev with official representatives of the countries from July 2011 to July 2012, the volume of commodity turnover between Kazakhstan and the partnering country and the volume of investments to Kazakhstan. Russia turned out to be the leader by frequency of the visits (18 meetings). Within one year Kazakhstan President met with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and incumbent President Vladimir Putin. Russia is followed by Kyrgyzstan (15 meetings) and Belarus (10 meetings). Top 3 non-CIS leaders include UAE (7 meetings), China (6 meetings) and Germany (9 meetings). Besides, the list includes the U.S. (6 meetings), Ukraine (6 meetings) and Uzbekistan (4 meetings). The rating of commodity turnover with Kazakhstan is led by China (16.8 percent of the total turnover), Russia (16.3 percent) and Italy (13.5 percent). Italy’s large share is driven by cooperation in oil and has sector, including at Kashagan. Large shares in commodity turnover are also registered with the Netherlands (6.4 percent), France (5.7 percent), Ukraine (4.2 percent), Switzerland (3.9 percent), Turkey (3.3 percent), Austria (3.2 percent) and Canada (2.4 percent). The majority of investments to Kazakhstan’s economy in 2011 were made by the Netherlands (15.5 percent), Russia (15.3 percent) and Great Britain (9.8 percent). China is listed in the 5th place in this list (7.3 percent) and the U.S. is ranked 6th (4.3 percent). Ukraine is rated 11th with 1.1 percent of the total investments. The total rating was made based on the three criteria. The list includes 39 countries. Russia, China and Ukraine are the leaders of the total rating. Belarus is ranked 11th. Thus, the rating helped form an objective picture of the existing priorities of Kazakhstan’s foreign policies.