To date, Kazakh entrepreneurs have concluded export contracts worth more than $ 1.7 million (700 million tenge), Kazakh Minister of Trade and Integration Bakhyt Sultanov said, speaking on October 27 at the forum “New Realities of International Trade: Relevance of Electronic Commerce in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic”. He recalled that last year 50 companies were selected to provide access to the international platform Alibaba.com. as a “Gold Supplier”. This premium status provides access to a global audience, the possibility of comprehensive promotion within the marketplace. This year, the Kazakh Ministry of Trade will continue to work on bringing Kazakh companies to international platforms such as Shopify, Wildberries, Ozon, Amazon and many others, the minister added.
According to him, during the pandemic, electronic commerce began to develop more actively in the world and in Kazakhstan. World statistics showed double-digit growth in online purchases. According to experts, e-commerce can become one of the drivers of economic growth in the country, as well as a source of new jobs. The volume of the Kazakhstani e-commerce market for the first half of 2020 amounted to $ 1.1 billion (435 billion tenge). This represents 9.4% of the total retail trade. Until the end of this year, we expect $ 2.2 billion (900 billion tenge) of e-commerce. And the volume of purchases on international Internet sites amounted to 5.4 million parcels for $ 164.5 million (66.4 billion tenge),” Sultanov said. According to him, during the quarantine period, there was an increase in online trading and payment transactions by 2.5 times (the volume amounted to 19 trillion 110.5 billion tenge). Kazakhstan has an ambitious goal of reaching an indicator of the share of e-commerce up to 15% by 2025, the minister said.