Kazakhstan Wants More Ag Investment

Matt Hopkins Posted by Matt Hopkins|28 October 2008

The government of Kazakhstan – the world’s sixth largest wheat exporter with a 7.9% share of the global market in 2007/08 – urged private companies to invest more in the country’s underdeveloped agriculture, reports Reuters. Vowing to improve Soviet-era infrastructure in the ag sector, the government said Kazakhstan could double the size of its harvest by boosting sowing areas and using modern fertilizers and equipment.

Of the US $76 billion in foreign investment Kazakhstan has received in the past 15 years, only 1.2% was channelled into agriculture. Agriculture Minister Akylbek Kurishbayev said that booming demand in the region meant there was plenty of room for Kazakhstan to raise production.

Kazakhstan expects to harvest 15.1 million tonnes of grain this year, down from last year’s record 20.1 million tonnes. However, the government has plans to build a network of grain terminals abroad, said Alikhan Smailov, head of the state agricultural company KazAgro. "We are looking to diversify grain exports," said Smailov. Currently, a terminal in Iran is under construction and others in the Ukraine and on the Chinese border are due to be built in the near future. Earlier this month, the government said it would also build a grain terminal in the Georgian port of Batumi.