Azernews.Az

By Kamila Aliyeva

Efficient transport infrastructure is a necessary condition for the development of the economy of Kazakhstan, in which the broad geography of the location of export-oriented production is combined with insufficient density of the transport network.

At the same time, the coordination of transport communications with neighboring countries is becoming increasingly important.

Kazakhstan has invested up to $30 billion in the development of transport infrastructure, logistics assets and competencies over the past 10 years.

This was announced by the Minister for Investment and Development of Kazakhstan, Zhenis Kasymbek, at the republican meeting on improving the efficiency of transport and logistics infrastructure, Kazinform reported.

Since 2015 the share of the transport sector in the country's GDP makes not less than 8 percent, according to the official.

“Over the past 10 years, the total amount of investments in the development of infrastructure, transport and logistics assets and competencies amounted to about $30 billion,” he noted.

During this period, more than 2,000 km of railways were built, 6,300 km of roads were reconstructed, the port capacities in the Caspian were increased up to 26 million tons, and the runways at 15 airports were reconstructed.

“The active construction of infrastructure had a positive impact on Kazakhstan's performance in international ratings. From 2011 to 2017, Kazakhstan's position on the ‘Quality of Infrastructure’ indicator in the Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum improved by 14 points. From 2014 to 2016, in the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index, we climbed from the 88th to the 77th place. According to the state program Nurly Zhol, in 2020 we plan to take the 40th place,” the minister added.

An increase (compared to 2016) in the annual volume of transit traffic by 7 times, revenues from transit - by 5.5 times up to $4 billion per year, and the volume of cargo, transported through the territory of Kazakhstan, up to 2 million containers per year are among the main tasks for the period until 2020.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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