Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Copying Ireland

Is there any country/state/province that doesn't want to copy Ireland? Latest one is Kazakhstan. President Nazarbayev told his Parliament that Ireland's example for attracting foreign investment is a good model for Kazakhstan. It sounds like Kazakhstan is already doing pretty well.
According to the Investments Committee of the Kazakhstan Industry and Trade Ministry Kazakhstan stands first among CIS states in terms of direct foreign investments per capita. USD 23.8 bln out of the total volume of cross-border infusions up to USD 43.9 bln were channeled to Kazakhstan. It is noteworthy the five top of the most large investor states unites the US (29.8%), the Netherlands (11.6%), Great Britain (11%), Italy (6.2%) and Switzerland (5.1%).

To date above 7 000 enterprises with the participation of the foreign capital are functioning in Kazakhstan. More than 80% of direct investments forwarded to Central Asia were infused in Kazakhstan's national economy.

Kazakhstan's achievements in attracting investments drew attention of the world-known international rating agencies. Back to 2002 one of the most authoritative rating agencies Moody'’s conferred Kazakhstan the rating of the investment class, first among intra-CIS, in 2004 Standard & Poor and Fitch upgraded the same rating.