The second Samruk Business Forum, organized by the «Samruk-Kazyna» JSC, was held in Nur-Sultan. The event was attended by President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Prime Minister Askar Mamin, Head of the Presidential Administration, members of the Government, Chairman of the Board of the Samruk-Kazyna Fund Akhmetzhan Yessimov, heads of national companies and representatives of business associations.

Since 2018, the Fund has been implementing an Import Substitution Program, which encourages the creation of new production facilities that have no analogues in Kazakhstan, with the conclusion of long-term offtake contracts. Domestic businesses are offered to establish production in Kazakhstan, and the Fund guarantees their purchase in the medium term. At the moment, 42 projects have been approved under the Import Substitution Program, with an investment volume of KZT 218 bln. In fact, real contracts for KZT27 bln were signed, more than 2000 jobs were created.

Enterprises that have already established the production of import-substituting products have paid more than KZT18 bln of taxes to the budget. The Chairman of the Fund also stressed the effectiveness of the implementation of another mechanism - "Category management of procurement". This type of procurement allows you to consolidate the total demand of companies for certain types of goods and determine the pool of suppliers. This mechanism allows for purchasing only from manufacturers, which makes it possible to exclude participation. From 2018 to 2020, strategic partnership agreements were concluded with 37 Kazakhstani producers for KZT246 bln.

The economic benefits of the Fund's group of companies from the implementation of strategic procurement management amounted to KZT69 bln. The Fund also supports Kazakhstani producers by expanding the competitive environment by reviewing the grounds for purchasing from a single source. The Fund revised the grounds for making purchases from a single source and reduced them by 37%, and the positions on intra-holding purchases were reduced by 22 times from 4,500 positions to 207.

The entire volume of these purchases was transferred to the business, which received direct access to them. During this period, 23 thousand business entities received contracts for 1 trillion tenge. At the expense of these contracts, the budget will receive at least KZT36 bln of tax revenues from business. It is important to note that by creating a competitive environment, the Fund's companies themselves saved KZT70 bln. The set of measures taken to improve the procurement system allowed the Fund to reduce the volume of purchases from one source by 5 times, while the volume of competitive purchases increased by 6 times. By reducing purchases from one source to KZT1.7 trln, the competitive environment has been expanded. These measures have provided employment for 280 thousand people.

The volume of tax payments due to the Fund's orders will amount to about KZT170 bln. The direct financial result of the measures taken was that the Fund's companies received KZT410 bln of savings. Along with the above-mentioned mechanisms, during the pandemic, together with the Atameken Chamber, the Fund took measures to provide targeted support to entrepreneurs - mandatory use of Kazakh products in the design of project documentation, establishing the contractor's liability for non-use of Kazakh materials in the form of a fine, mandatory payment of an advance of at least 30% and reducing the payment period to 10 days, and so on. In order to minimize corruption risks, as well as to create more transparent procedures for entrepreneurs, measures were taken to digitalize services.

It should be noted that the Procurement Rules have been amended, according to which representatives of the public participate in the procurement of more than KZT75 mln as observers. At the same time, an additional mandatory requirement for photo and video recording of negotiations between customers and suppliers has been introduced. The measures taken made it possible to significantly support domestic business in difficult times for the country's economy as a whole. This is evidenced by the following indicators on the example of the sectors of the "economy of simple things" - the share of purchases from domestic entrepreneurs in 2020 was 83% against 45% in 2019, while the share of mechanical engineering was more than doubled – from 30% to 79%.

The Head of the Fund presented to the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan a new project aimed at supporting idle production enterprises. In particular, the project provides for the conclusion of direct contracts for the purchase of goods for the needs of the Fund's group of companies. To do this, it is proposed to form a list of enterprises that have difficulties selling their own products together with local executive bodies. This will allow the group of companies to purchase the necessary goods, and the enterprises to increase the utilization of production capacities and save jobs.

A preliminary analysis of such approaches for 37 enterprises showed that with their targeted support, capacity utilization will increase from 35 to 85%, more than 1,900 idle jobs will be restored and 780 new jobs will be created. The volume of additional tax deductions will amount to KZT5.5 bln.