Kazakh PM Askar Mamin meets with WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya

The meeting focused on increasing the transit potential of Kazakhstan and its further integration into global transport corridors, implementing the international standards on trade procedure simplification, ensuring the safety of international supply chain, and improving customs duties and taxes.

Special attention was placed on the expansion of cooperation between Kazakhstan and the World Customs Organization in eliminating transit barriers, developing e-commerce, standardizing the exchange of customs information processes with foreign countries, and further digitalizing export-import operations.

The Head of the Kazakh Government stressed that in order to increase the country’s transport potential in accordance with the WCO standards the new crossing point Nurly Zhol along the Kazakh-Chinese border was built, crossing points B.Konysbayev at the Kazakh-Uzbek border and Kordai at the Kazakh-Kyrgyz border were improved.

There are plans to modernize nine road and one railway crossing points by 2024 which will lead to an eight time rise in throughput and decrease the time for passing borders.

Mikuriya highly commended the reforms in the customs and tax spheres, measures for modernizing border crossing points, formation of the national distribution system, and development of transborder trade infrastructure in Kazakhstan.

Over the past three years, the WCO has sent 12 technical missions to Kazakhstan as part of the work to implement the core international conventions in the export-import operation area. Five more missions on the improvement of the Kazakh transit potential and trade procedure simplification are slated for 2022.

As part of his visit, the Secretary General of the World Customs Organization paid a visit to the airport in Turkestan city and the modernized crossing point B.Konysbayev at the Kazakh-Uzbek border.