As part of the visit of the Minister of State at the Department for Business and Trade, Minister of State for the Investment Security Unit, and Minister for Industry and Economic Security of Great Britain Nusrat Ghani to Kazakhstan, the tenth anniversary meeting of the Kazakh-British Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technical and Cultural Cooperation (IPC) was held in Astana. On the Kazakh side, the Intergovernmental Commission is headed by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nazira Nurbayeva, El.kz cites MFA
During the event, the parties reviewed the results of the IPC's activities for 2023, and also discussed the current state and prospects for expanding trade and economic cooperation. Issues of cooperation in the field of trade, investment, mining, agriculture, water supply, green energy, education, etc. were touched upon.
In her speech, Deputy Minister Nurbayeva stressed that the development of large-scale and mutually beneficial cooperation with the UK is one of the main priorities of Kazakhstan. She informed that the UK is the seventh largest investor in the economy of Kazakhstan with a total inflow of FDI exceeding 21 billion US dollars since 1993. The volume of mutual trade by the end of 2022 increased by 58%, and reached 1.8 billion US dollars.
In turn, Minister Ghani highly appreciated Kazakhstan's efforts to create favorable conditions for doing business in the region and expressed the British side's interest in deepening partnership in the field of extraction and processing of critical minerals, infrastructure development, opening new educational institutions with British participation, as well as strengthening regional food security.
As a result of the visit, a Roadmap for strategic partnership in the field of critical minerals for 2023-2024 was agreed, and a Memorandum was signed between the Ministry of Higher Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Ministry of Business and Trade of the United Kingdom on cooperation in the field of higher education.
The parties agreed to hold the next 11th meeting of the IPC in 2024 in London.