Serbia’s pharmaceutical companies may localize their production in Kazakhstan

The talks were held as part of B2B meetings with companies that have shown interest in the Kazakh market.

The talks focused on the pharmaceutical industry. As Sultanbek noted, Serbian enterprises are quite widely represented in the global pharmaceutical market.

He reminded that Kazakhstan has an import substitution strategy, aiming to increase the share of domestic pharmaceutical production to 50%. To this end, Kazakh Invest, together with the Healthcare Ministry, is working to attract potential pharmaceutical companies, including Big Pharma giants, to Kazakhstan.

He said Kazakh Invest also supports them in signing investment agreements with the Government of Kazakhstan. In just the first two months of this year, 10 investment agreements have been signed, five of them in the pharmaceutical sector. So, interest in the pharmaceutical industry in Kazakhstan is quite high.

Another promising area of cooperation he mentioned is the transport and logistics sector.

He stressed that Kazakhstan is known as the logistics hub of Central Asia. Kazakhstan is located between the two largest trading centers on the Eurasian continent, Southeast Asia and the European Union. A large part, up to 90%, of trade turnover between these regions that goes by land passes through Kazakhstan. Therefore, Serbian companies simply cannot avoid Kazakhstan if they want their goods transported to Southeast Asia or to receive goods from Southeast Asia.

According to him, the advantage of rail transit through Kazakhstan lies in delivery speed. For example, a container shipped by sea from Shanghai to Serbia takes 35–40 days, while by rail through Kazakhstan it takes up to 20 days.

It was previously reported that Serbia is also interested in creating joint production of baby food and fruit cereals with Kazakhstan.