By Rhod Mackenzie
About 125 joint investment projects are currently being implemented between Kazakhstan and Russia, by next year the task is to double this figure, up to 250, Minister of Industry and Infrastructure Development of Kazakhstan Marat Karabayev said at Innoprom-2023.
"In general, in the next five years we have a pool of investment projects worth $75 billion, which is over 800 projects," he said.
He noted the interest in cooperation in the manufacturing industry, iron ore processing, aluminum and copper industries, construction, light industry and other areas.
As President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin noted, there is a growing interest of Russian companies in the Eurasian market and Kazakhstan in particular.
"Despite the difficult international conditions, we see interest in development and cooperation both from Russian business and from other member countries of the Eurasian Economic Union. This is also confirmed by the figures of mutual trade," he said.
According to the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the former suppliers are actually being replaced by companies from the EAEU countries; over the past year, mutual trade has grown by almost 15%.
"It is clear that we cannot solve the problems of diversification of our ( Russian - IF ) economy, import substitution only through trade , therefore it is necessary to develop industrial cooperation, which today has become a driver of deepening integration interaction," Shokhin noted.
This article originally appeared in Russian at interfax.ru