During the recent III Forum of interregional cooperation between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, one of the directions for the development of trade-economic partnership, the countries chose mutual assistance in promoting their goods.
“Last year, Kazakhstan was one of the first in the region to launch an export acceleration program for exporters. The tool has already shown its effectiveness: new exporters have appeared, supplies of existing exporters have increased. We are ready to share our experience and scale the program on the principle of mutual partnership: 25 Kazakh companies focused on your market, and 25 Uzbek companies on the Kazakhstan market,” the Minister of Trade and Integration of Kazakhstan Bakhyt Sultanov said.
Since export acceleration is designed for small and medium-sized businesses, at least 25 companies from the SME sector will be able to gain a foothold in the neighboring country’s market as early as next year.
At the same time, which is much more important, mutual assistance in promotion will allow not only to identify “pain points” that hinder the export of Kazakhstani goods to the Uzbek market, but also to work to eliminate them.
“The program will allow enterprises to learn the specifics of the markets of the two fraternal countries. In addition, the possibilities of creating joint ventures and selling aggregate exports to third countries will be analyzed,” Asel Yegemberdiyeva, Deputy Director General of QazTrade, said.
The export acceleration program has been implemented on the basis of JSC “Center for the Development of Trade Policy QazTrade” for the second year. The business receives a full range of services: from analyzing the potential of an enterprise and its products to assisting in choosing a market/partner, finding a buyer, conducting a marketing campaign and forming the necessary documents for export.
As for Uzbekistan, the traditional goods for Kazakhstani export are copper concentrates and aluminum, rolled metal, flour, vegetable oils, fertilizers and engineering products.
“Considering that the program is designed only for small and medium-sized businesses, we will closely cooperate with the Export Promotion Agency of Uzbekistan and the Chambers of Commerce of our countries. Our task is not only to identify and remove barriers to trade in each other’s markets, but also to assist in finding potential partners (buyers) for the goods of both countries,” Yegemberdiyeva explained.
