Thursday, August 02, 2012 -
Kazakhstan’s bilateral trade turnover with member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) soared by 31.7 percent to $4.7 billion in the first half of 2012 compared to the same period last year, a senior Kazakh finance official said Thursday.
Trade with the 10-country alliance of former Soviet republics amounts to 12 percent of Kazakhstan’s overall business dealings.
Its total foreign trade turnover this year to June 30 came to $55.4 billion, an 18 percent year-on-year increase.
Kazakh total exports accounted for $43.5 billion of this, while its imports amounted to the remaining $11.9 billion, according to statistics from the Customs Control Committee of the finance ministry.
Ayan Kolbaev, chief of the committee that provides trading analysis and statistics for Central Asia’s largest economy, said the overall volume of trade with its non-CIS partners was up by 16.9 percent to $50.7 billion for the comparable periods.
Of that volume, Kazakhstan’s exports amounted to $41 billion while its imports from the non-CIS countries came to $9.8 billion, Kolbaev told the country’s state-run news service web site Kazinform.
China is Kazakhstan’s largest trading partner, topping the lists both the exports and imports lists. The other leading recipients of Kazakh goods are Italy, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, and Austria.
Ukraine is the largest supplier of goods to Kazakhstan, ahead of the United States, Germany, Korea, and Italy.
The CIS comprises the five Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, along with Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Armenia.