Kazakhstan to study Poland’s experience in small business development

“Kazakhstan attaches great importance to the development of trade-economic relations with your country which has a huge potential. We are interested in Polish experience in development of small and medium enterprises which  produce 67% of gross domestic product of Poland. We stare in envy on this. From the first days of our independence, I have been personally working on development of small and medium businesses in our country,” noted Nazarbayev addressing his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda at the Kazakh-Polish business Forum in Warsaw today.

“The peculiarities of transition of Poland and Kazakhstan to market economy differ from each other, because  private sector existed in Poland even till 1940. Kazakhstan had never had it in its history. We needed to explain the people that private property may exist too. Therefore, the establishment of small and medium enterprises was very important for us. However, only 30% of the country’s economy is involved in this sector to date,” the Head of State added.

Nazarbayev informed the Polish businessmen that Kazakhstan fully supports development of SMEs, namely, the implementation of special national programs aimed at creation of favorable conditions. He told also about  Damu Entrepreneurship Development Fund which provides target support to the businessmen.  

“We subsidize interest rates for small enterprises. For instance, the banks’ interest rate is 10-12%, but for small business is must be only at 7%.   Your experience could be helpful for us in this sphere. Damu Entrepreneurship Development Fund and Polish Agency for Development of Entrepreneurship have signed today a memorandum of cooperation,” he added.