OREANDA-NEWS. On November 26, 2007 Astana hosted the XI sitting of the Russian-Kazakh Intergovernmental Committee for Cooperation, reported the Official website http://en.government.kz.

As Galym Orazbakov, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Industry and Trade and co-chairman of the Committee on the Kazakh side, noted that Russia is “a strategic and one of the largest trade partners, a stable investor into the Kazakh economy”. According to the Minister, for the 9 months of the current year the trade turnover between the two nations mounted to USD 11,7 billion, 31,4% up year-on-year.

In his turn, Victor Khristenko, Russia’s Minister of Industry and Energy and co-chairman of the Committee on the Russian side, expressed confidence that “by the end of the year the trade turnover figure will be brought to USD 16 billion”.

“Russian investments are mainly injected to the sectors of prime importance to Kazakhstan. The number of actually operating JVs with Russian capital has been growing from year to year and currently stands at over 3 thousand”, G. Orazbakov said. He also pointed to the two nations’ interest to more intensive cooperation in industrial research.

“I believe that the trade-and-economic ties between Kazakhstan and Russia will remain a major vector of our nations’ foreign polices in the longer run”, the Kazakh Minister of Industry and Trade said.

The sitting of the Intergovernmental Committee will focus on multiple realms, notably on humanitarian cooperation, O&G, space industry, transport issues, electric power generation, etc.