Business clusters in ‘Kazakhstan 2050’ strategy

Although, recent changes in Kazakhstani economy have improved the overall competitiveness, the labor productivity still needs to be developed. Indeed, the overall macroeconomic conditions in Kazakhstan are advantageous and main profit comes from the oil and gas as well as overall prosperity of the Kazakhstani economy. Kazakhstan is counted as a favorable country due to its political stability, high social indicators and good quality of the laws. Talking specifically about positive sides of the Kazakhstani microeconomic situation, it has relatively low administrative costs, moderate tariffs, low electricity costs, modern airport infrastructure and high level of investment capital. In opposite, small local market is not favorable for foreign companies and weak regulations of IT and lack of technical skills also create certain limits for creation of new businesses within the country. Therefore, seven main clusters have to be developed properly in order to improve the current of the Kazakhstani economy situation in a more efficient ways and increase the amount of recourses, which are needed for the implementation of “Strategy – 2050”.

Food processing

Agriculture is highly developed in South Kazakhstan and Akmola region. In order to decrease production costs and increase the level of competitiveness of the products, government has decided to provide raw materials for processing enterprises, high-technological production and markets for new products. Therefore, it is important to support areas such as milk processing, meat processing, cheese and milk, production of butter, production of oil and fat products, fruit and vegetables, sugar production as well as primary processing of wool and skins of cattle. In general, there are 1,370 active enterprises and 60 of them are the largest ones in the food processing industry. Also, the Company called “Kolaks-M” manufactures and distributes certain mini-plants, which were built for processing of agricultural products such as milk, meat and wild raw materials. It can be noted that this company helps to develop the food processing and improve the quality of the agricultural products.

Metallurgy

Kazakhstan is the largest producers and exporters of the refined copper and its share in the world is approximately 2.3%. At the meantime, almost all amount of copper produced within the country is exported to some European countries such as Germany and Italy. Kazakhstan is on the 3^rd place based on gold producer, which production is increasing annually. Talking specifically about ferrous metallurgy, Kazakhstan is on the 8^th place in the world based on iron ore reserves and its share in world is around 6%. Kazakhstan produces more than 12.5% of the national industrial output. Aktobe region has unique mineral resource base because its territory is concentrated about 10% of proven and 30% of forecast hydrocarbon resources such as chromium, nickel, titanium, and phosphates. Also, nonferrous metallurgy is well developed in the East Kazakhstan region. Karaganda region is rich for production of copper, coal, lead, zinc, iron and some rare metals. Recently, Engineering Union of Kazakhstan has decided to develop the construction of steel plant for the production of high-quality steel in order to establish its own production of high quality metal.