Involving representatives of the Prosecutor's Office, courts and state agencies to consider investors' requests - M. Tleuberdi
Kazakhstan intends to introduce new approaches to working with potential investors. That was reported by the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan – the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mukhtar Tleuberdi at the Government’s session while discussing measures to perform the instructions of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan K. Tokayev, announced at an extended meeting of the Government held on January, 26 this year.
M. Tleuberdi noted that the effective and well-coordinated work of all the institutions involved in attracting private investment is crucial in the context of global economic stagnation and the low investment cycle.
“In this regard, in order to shift the work on attracting investments, in the face of growing global competition, to a qualitatively new level, we propose to introduce new approaches to working with potential investors and to strengthen work on supporting investment projects. We believe that it necessary to create an investment headquarters under the leadership of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which will promptly consider investment projects and provide comprehensive support to investors,” the Deputy Head of Government added.
It is proposed to arrange the work of this headquarters in such a way that state agencies and private business are forming an investment order, which will be accumulated in NC KAZAKHINVEST JSC.
Further, the competence of the AIFC will be used to verify investment proposals on the basis of “Business Connect”.
A special pool will be formed from the number of verified projects and then accompanied by a separate TaskForce division throughout the project implementation phase.
According to Mukhtar Tleuberdi, this division is a specially created team of project experts/negotiators under the investment headquarters, which will be responsible for arranging the work and setting the agenda of the investment headquarters. This team may also involve officials of government agencies, financial institutions and the quasi-public sector if needed.
Specific projects those being studied with investors will be submitted for consideration by the investment headquarters to make a management decision to ensure special conditions for the investor.
Special conditions for investors will be ensured by the Strategic Investment Agreement under the Law on Economic Growth Recovery, which came into force on January, 16 this year.
It should be noted that in January this year, the first such agreement was signed between the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the American company VALMONT. So, after a collegial review by the members of the investment headquarters, the project is considered to have been approved by signing of the investment agreement.
This algorithm will be improved if needed.
If any challenges connected with the project occur, investor requests have to be considered at the site of the investment ombudsman with the participation of representatives of the Prosecutor's Office, courts, agencies accountable to the President, and other state agencies, including with the predominant use of the jurisdiction of the AIFC court.
Thus, end-to-end support and consolidation of investment projects will be provided in order to avoid duplication of functions of the responsible authorities.
These approaches will be coordinated with the OECD, the World Bank, Atameken and the quasi-public sector.
More detailed information on the instructions of the Head of State on reforming the investment management system will be available as soon as possible.