|
KAZAKH PRESIDENT VISITS TURKMENISTAN AND TAJIKISTAN
GULNUR RAKHMATULINA,
Senior research fellow of the Kazakhstan Institute for the Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Almaty
On September 11, 2007 President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev started his visit to Turkmenistan.
It should be noted that recently the dialogue between Kazakhstan and neighboring countries has been intensified. This is chiefly due to strengthening of its key role in Central Asia. The republic has reached stable economic growth, the market and constitutional reforms have been carried out effectively. Today Kazakhstan is a full and responsible member of the international community and makes the region geopolitically stable and secure.
Kazakhstan has several times brought forward the integration initiatives. The initiative to create the Central Asian Union seems to be of current importance to Nazarbayev. Its implementation is to favor the future formation of the common goods and services market in the region and the stable development of those countries. Today Kazakhstan’s investment opportunities are getting broader, it is ready to invest in the development of the priority sectors of the Central Asian economies.
Among other agreements reached during Nursultan Nazarbayev’s visit to Turkmenistan were the agreements on development of bilateral cooperation in the sphere of transportation, energy and public health. Another relevant cooperation project is construction of the railway, which would connect Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and run to Iran and the Gulf countries.
As regards the energy sector, the issues of the Turkmen gas transit through Kazakhstan to the foreign markets, implementation of the Caspian gas pipeline project, participation of the Kazakh companies in prospecting and developing the hydrocarbon deposits in Turkmenistan were also examined.
The possibilities of construction of the seaport and the airport in the city of Turkmenbashi and cement works in Turkmenistan were also considered. The Kazakh President said that the country was ready to start negotiations on those issues. It is planned to open the representative offices of the Kazakh banks, funds and industrial companies in Turkmenistan in the near future. Their activity will favor the development of mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries.
In the course of the official visit of President Nursultan Nazarbayev to Tajikistan (September 12-13) the Agreement on Creation of the Kazakh and Tajik Investment Fund with the authorized capital of $100 million was signed, which will be an important factor of intensifying the integration of the two countries. The priority Tajik economic sectors are hydropower engineering and aluminum industry. Inflow of Kazakhstan's capital into those sectors will favor their efficient development, making the situation in the economic sector more stable and creating new jobs.
The fact that Kazakhstan is stepping up economic cooperation with the Central Asian countries by no means signifies that Russia’s interests in the region are being infringed upon. The current condition of the Central Asian economies requires intensive financial aid to many of their sectors. It is necessary to emphasize a very low competitiveness of the region’s industrial production, the national economies’ becoming still more primitive, which is typical of the other CIS countries, too. So, there is vast space for all the investors, who are ready to invest in one or another project.
Kazakhstan and Russia’s role in this process consists in speeding up the regional integration and stimulating the efficient implementation of the joint projects that would favor the development of transit potential of the Central Asian states (in the long term, of the entire post-Soviet space), their sustainable development, making the region more stable and secure. It is important for the intergovernmental agreements to move beyond the level of the interagency harmonization. For example, the Agreement on the Caspian gas pipeline should have been signed on September 1, 2007. However, its signing was delayed because Russia had not prepared the appropriate project feasibility study. If our countries want a real integration, they must take appropriate steps to develop the mutually beneficial relations, rather than be afraid of stronger influence of one or another country.
September 14, 2007
|
