Kazakhstan intends to double volume of light industry
Light industry is an industry that requires enormous efforts for sustainable development. The Congress brought together the heads of the authorized government agencies, Atameken and representatives of light industry businesses to develop specific mechanisms of action. Today, in the context of technology modernization, the industry faces significant challenges of industry 4.0 and an important task on import substitution.
Speaking at the Congress, Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Roman Sklyar noted that being one of the closest to the consumer sectors of the economy, the light industry has all the opportunities for dynamic development and has all the prerequisites for this. Deputy Prime Minister also explained that despite the positive changes, domestic producers still face several difficult tasks: modernization of production, increasing the competitiveness of Kazakh goods, increasing the share of innovative products in domestic and foreign markets.
"These are our common tasks and we will have to solve them together in the near future," Roman Sklyar said.
Currently, 1,016 enterprises operate in the light industry including 12 large, 26 medium and 978 are small enterprises, i.e. medium and small businesses account for 98.7%. More than 12.9 thousand people work in the light industry.
Over the last ten years, the dynamics of production volumes in the light industry show a positive trend, and from year to year there has been a steady increase in production volumes. Over the past ten years, production volumes have increased 3.6 times, from 27.5 billion tenge in 2008 to 93.7 billion tenge in 2018.
Akim of Nur-Sultan Altay Kulginov drew attention to the high market competition.
"People buying goods pay attention to the quality, design, and price of products. These are the main characteristics of the distribution of goods. We are glad that the domestic light manufacturers can already sew even school uniforms; we had to import them earlier. This congress will give a very good impetus to further development. The analysis of the Economy of Simple Things programme showed that the demand is very high for light industry products; the niche on the market is not occupied. We want to listen to all recommendations and proposals, and we will take on new ideas that will be expressed here,” Altay Kulginov said.
Ablay Myrzakhmetov, the Chairman of the Atameken NCE RK, noted the importance of the adoption of the Roadmap for the development of light industry, which includes 9 areas of development. Also, he touched upon the issues of the development of their raw materials, issues of combating illegal trafficking and increasing local content at public procurement sites.
"Improving local content is one of the priorities of the industry's development. At least 60 billion tenge are spent annually from various government procurement sites on light industry products: only 17 billion tenge is spent on the purchase of bed linen in hospitals. There are also defense orders, KTZ orders, and so on. Entrepreneurs, in turn, have to produce goods that must meet the price/quality ratio,” he said.
Ablay Myrzakhmetov told in detail about the work of the project office within the limits of the Economy of Simple Things State Programme.
"At the moment we have 26 light industry projects worth 6 billion tenge. The figure is not so high, but as you know, the basis of the light industry in Kazakhstan is a small business, which is 96% of the industry. The figure is not so high, but as you know, the basis of the light industry in Kazakhstan is a small business, which is 96% of the industry. Therefore, it is obvious that the volume of applications is not large, but nevertheless, there are some, we expect large enterprises to expand too,” he said.
As part of the event, an exhibition of domestic light industry products and the Energy of the Creation fashion show was organized with the participation of domestic fashion brands Utari, Samidel, I'm different, Saukele, Gulnara Kassym, ZekenModa, the Inkar Sezim ethnographic studio and graduates of the Kazakh University of Technology and Business.
The Congress concluded with the signing of the Memorandum of Cooperation between the Trade Representation of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the Russian Federation and the Qaz Textile industry National Association of Light Industry.
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