OREANDA-NEWS. May 21, 2014. The Government of Kazakhstan has approved the development program of food industry in the country until 2020. It has been announced by Minister of Agriculture Asylzhan Mamytbekov at a briefing in the Central Communications Service.

The program aims to perform a number of key tasks such as increasing availability of agricultural raw materials, financial services, utilities and transport, creating conditions for the expansion of domestic sales of food products, training and retraining workers, and so on.

According to the press service of the Agriculture Ministry, as a result of implementation of the program it is expected to increase investment in fixed capital of food and processing industry three times - up to 97 billion tenge by 2019 (in 2013 - 33 billion tenge). It is assumed that food products import will drop three times, and increase the number of employed workers in this industry.

Kazakhstan will reduce food imports, Agriculture Minister Asylzhan Mamytbekov said.

According to him, this contributes to implementation of food industry development program approved by the Government.

"Our program focuses on development of processing plants. We expect that by 2020, imports will decrease significantly for a number of products," the Minister said.

According to him, currently import of main types of food is more than 60% of total import volume in Kazakhstan. Thus, import of confectionery is 18% of total import, dairy products - 13%, sugar - 8%, poultry - 6% , canned fruits and vegetables - 6% , tea - 5% , vegetable oil and cooked meats - 3%.