The program was discussed at the enlarged meeting of the committees of AIC, food industry and manufacturing industry NCE RK "Atameken"

The draft concept of the state program of AIC development for 2017-2021 was presented by the Ministry of Agriculture of Kazakhstan at the enlarged meeting of the committees of agriculture, food processing and manufacturing of NCE RK "Atameken", which was attended by representatives of business, trade unions and business associations.

Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Agriculture of Kazakhstan Askar Myrzakhmetov spoke about the goals and objectives of the concept of the state program of AIC development. He highlighted the agribusiness industries, on which will be spread measures of state support, revealing the mechanism of support of private farms through agricultural cooperatives, informed about the measures for the implementation of a focused export policies and promotion of Kazakhstan's brand organic products. "Six objectives were set for the realization of the goal of the program: it is improving the efficiency of livestock by 58% and crop production by 40%, the development of large-scale agricultural cooperation, maximum coverage of agricultural sector with effective and affordable state support and involvement in the turnover of more than 600 thousand hectares of irrigated land and improving the state agribusiness regulation", - said Myrzakhmetov.

According to Deputy Prime Minister, under the state program of AIC development will continue diversification of cropped land. "Square of wheat will be reduced to 2.3 million hectares. The main reason for this is the surplus of wheat production. On liberated areas will be sown more popular crop, like barley, oats, oilseeds and others, which give a good harvest", - he added.

Answering the questions of entrepreneurs on the financing of Agricultural Sciences, Askar Myrzakhmetov noted that new approaches are proposed. "We intend to involve production to the maximum that is you, dear entrepreneurs, because we believe that if some scientific theme is not demanded by the business community, it should not be funded as an applied science. Fundamental science - is another matter. But we believe that we must focus on the needs of production. For example, when a business says: I need agricultural technologies that increase productivity several times, a specific contract is signed, which clearly prescribes responsibility of the parties, where we take on certain commitments to implement the delivered business problem", - said Deputy Prime Minister – the Minister of Agriculture.

Askar Myrzakhmetov also stressed the importance of development of agricultural cooperation. "Now the reality is that there is a large volume of production, but produced products are not processed, and there is no added value. On the other hand, all existing enterprises are not fully loaded. We have raw materials, but plants are not used at full capacity. We want through agricultural cooperation to solve this problem: to load existing plants to the maximum", - said Deputy Prime Minister.

First Vice-Minister of Agriculture of Kazakhstan Kairat Aituganov, in turn, urged people to participate actively in the discussion of the concept of a new state program. "The basic approach in selecting the objectives and implementation of the program is supply of Kazakhstani market with food, targeted export policy and increase of income of rural population. The concept of the program is published on the website of Ministry of Agriculture and the official website of the Ministry of Agriculture on Facebook. Everyone can write an opinion in the comments to the Concept. All views will be taken into account", - he said.

Aituganov also said that in order to support domestic agricultural producers at foreign markets, it is planned to establish the export agribusiness center on the basis of JSC "Food Corporation" with the simultaneous merger of JSC “KAZNEX” and “KazAgroGarant”. "The created center will perform the following functions: service support for farmers, export channels for farmers and their financial support. As part of this task 610 tonnes of irrigated land will be involved through attraction of loans from international financial organizations. The European Reconstruction and Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank and Islamic Development Bank ", - he said.

According to Deputy Minister, today the purchase of agricultural machinery is subsidized as part of the investment cost recovery program, but in recent years in upgrade of technology and equipment there has developed a disparity toward buying expensive technology by largest agricultural holdings. "This has caused a slowdown of renovation of machines and tractors and agricultural equipment in agribusiness as a whole. The proposed options for the proportion of purchase of agricultural equipment of foreign and CIS production illustrate the possibility of increasing the rate of update for the same money. This will be facilitated with standard orientation on investment subsidy for the purchase of inexpensive equipment. This assumes an agreement between the Ministry and the large machine-building parks of CIS and China, for the production of agricultural machinery in Kazakhstan with a high level of localization", - he said.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the program will provide by 2021 a further increase of added value of agriculture in the amount of 1 trillion tenge or by 33% compared to 2015; 10-fold increase of the coverage of agricultural producers by support measures - from 68 to 670 thousand; reduction of the negative balance of export and import of agricultural products by 5 times - from 1.3 billion US dollars to 0.27 billion US dollars;. increase of irrigated land by 1.4 times - from 1.4 million hectares to 2.0 million hectares, creation of sales system for 670 thousand private farms on the basis of cooperation; increasing the efficiency of livestock by 58% and 40% of crop.

 During the meeting, the business community voiced its suggestions and questions. Many of them referred to subsidization of certain industries.

"Kazakhstan has always been a grain power. This year, we received a bumper crop. Poultry farmers need only 1 million 180 thousand tons of feed. Today, no poultry farm has reserves for more than 2.5 months. Imagine, we can’t buy the grain with this yield. One more question. It was announced that 4 billion tenge will be allocated for subsidies for feed. They are given to all, who produce feed or freestanding plants", - said the President of the Union of Poultry Farmers of Kazakhstan Ruslan Sharipov.

"We want to load processing plants to the maximum, including animal feed. 72 plant, we plan to maintain, they are loaded only to 48%, their capacity is 2.5 million tons. They are produce 1 million 200 thousand tonnes. Now we want to arrange a special form of state procurements, we want to organize purchase of barley and maize and provide feed mills", - responded Deputy Prime Minister Askar Myrzakhmetov.

 Specific proposals were made by the Meat Union. Its head Maksut Baktibaev noted that part of the meat exports needs to be increased to 200 thousand tons in line with demand from China (in the concept of the program it is planned to increase it to 80 thousand tons). "To do this, it is necessary to increase the commodity breeding stock in small and medium-sized farmers through the importation of 100 thousand heads every year. Subsidies should be 12 billion tenge annually, there are loans of "KazAgro", it is necessary to shift to import, rather than domestic procurement. This will provide employment in rural areas and a boost to the development of cooperation", - he said.

He also suggested that the subsidy mechanism should be used as a free lending: to give farmers 50% in February of the applications in the form of an advance, the rest after later.

According to Baktibaev, it is necessary to increase the estimated value of agricultural land - to assess by the market value, not just the inventory and run the mechanism of the market, purchase and sale of rights to lease land.