Sectors have been prioritised as part of implementation of Phase 1 of Kazakhstan Industrial and Innovative Development Strategy.

 

In particular, the Kazakh Centre for Marketing and Analytical Research (www.cmar.kz) and a firm of international consultants J.E. Austin Associates Inc. are implementing a project for assessing competitiveness of existing and potentially competitive sectors of the Kazakh economy and making recommendations on their development.

 

Under the project virtually all non-extractive industries and sub-sectors have been already reviewed (about 150 sectors and sub-sectors) not predetermined “competitive” sectors.

 

Phase 1 of the project is complete now. As a result, 23 industries having internal assets and a potential to compete have been selected; their potential in the national, regional and international markets have been assessed; and 7 most promising sectors and sub-sectors have been selected (so-called ”clusters” ). These include food cluster, oil and gas cluster, tourism cluster, textile cluster, metallurgical cluster, transport and logistical service cluster and construction materials cluster.  

 

In September 2005 the Kazakh government approved a new list of priority activity categories in terms of investment. There are 237 of them. These include agriculture, light industry, chemical and metallurgical industries, machine building, electric power sector, transport sector, construction material sector et al. Revision of the list first made in 2003 was driven primarily by established clusters in a number of promising sectors. So given expected transport and logistics service cluster such operations as transport terminal (ports, terminal, stations, jetties and berths) operation, cargo warehousing and transhipping (centres for logistics and warehouses) have been added to the list. In order to establish a tourism cluster, there must be as many hotels as possible. That is why hotels activity has been added to the list.