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 | Speeches | | |
The President of the Republic at the Estonian-Kazakh Business Forum on 2 June 2004 in Astana02.06.2004
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am very glad to greet you also on my behalf. This morning we had with President Nazarbayev a pleasant and fruitful meeting and now we can see that the same kind of pleasant cooperation is characterizing your business forum.
I believe that this is most important to our future because the hitherto economic cooperation between Estonia and Kazakhstan has been rather modest. What we have so far, are contacts between precious few enterprises. It is understandable to a certain extent since the geographical distance between our countries is remarkable. On top of that, it is only ten years since our economic development started to gather momentum.
At the present development stage, our entrepreneurs already are seeking cooperation partners also in farther regions including the East: CIS countries and China. In the last year, six percent of Estonian exports went to CIS countries. In our imports and, notably in transit, Russia plays an important role, and just here we see good possibilities to promote cooperation with Kazakhstan, as well.
Estonian businessmen have realized that your region has a great development potential and its economy is making rapid progress. The exceptionally large business delegation visiting you is a proof of Estonian businessmen's lively interest in Kazakhstan. This interest undoubtedly creates good conditions for our future cooperation.
Our Kazakh colleagues are well aware of possibilities to trade with and to invest in Estonia as a EU Member State, which are rather favourable to bilateral economic relations.
Our cooperation could cover a very wide range of items from transit of goods and trade in food and wood products to information technology and communication services. Estonia boasts one of the largest and most rapidly developing ports at the Baltic Sea, which can offer Kazakh goods a safe transit route with advanced logistics to reach EU countries, notably those in Northern Europe, and vice versa, European goods to reach Kazakhstan.
Yet that is not nearly all of it. Also establishing joint ventures both in Estonia and Kazakhstan may offer great opportunities. A good example of that is the Estonian-Kazakh Joint Venture Haljas-Kazakhstan, a food wholesale distributor, which will shortly start operating. Estonian enterprises could offer their experience and manufacturing technology in a good few areas from producing silver thread socks to building materials. Mutual investments, which are very modest so far, would form a good basis for setting up joint ventures.
I believe that if we pooled your experience concerning Central Asian countries and our experience gained as a maritime country between the East and the West we could significantly enhance our mutually beneficial cooperation.
Thank you for your attention. I wish you a lot of strength and every success!
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