The first stage of the project to create a national commodity distribution system was suspended. Currently, government agencies are reviewing the project and are considering several alternative scenarios for creating wholesale distribution centers with the involvement of interested investors. In particular, the construction of 15 agro-logistics centers was excluded from the project. This was announced at a briefing in the CCS by Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan – Minister of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan Bakhyt Sultanov.
“Today, we are excluding a large block from this project. You remember, we planned to build 15 agro-logistics centers in different regions, mainly concentrated in the places where the main types of our fruit and vegetable products grow. This is a complex project. If all 24 objects required state obligations for 14 years, about 980 billion tenge, then more than half – it was just 15 agrologistic centers. To date, approaches have been revised in the direction of using the tool of the Ministry of Agriculture, which has resources allocated from the budget, to stimulate investment in vegetable stores,” Bakhyt Sultanov said.
He said that the Ministry of Agriculture, through investment subsidies, will encourage producers to create appropriate vegetable stores and maintain such centers as part of their business.
“This requires much less funds compared to 463 billion tenge for the direct construction and maintenance of agro-logistics centers … And with less resources, about 100-odd billion tenge, we will be able to provide storage through this program,” he specified.
At the same time, the minister noted that through a single information system, coordination will be implemented on the formation of high-quality product pools, timely volumes of supplies to wholesale markets, other suppliers and consumers.
“We are creating a special platform. It was also provided for in the first model, in the initial draft, but we are now expanding this functionality and focusing more on coordinating existing, already created such facilities,” the head of the Ministry of Trade said.
According to him, today there are 9 different kinds of wholesale and retail centers, 1171 vegetable storage warehouses created by private business. Their capacity is 3.5 million tons.
Recall that earlier the President of Kazakhstan at an expanded meeting of the government expressed criticism in connection with the delay in the launch of the National Commodity Distribution System with a network of Wholesale Distribution Centers.
“We planned 24 facilities, the first of which were to come into operation in 2022, 2023, and by 2024 all 24 facilities. Unfortunately, within the framework of the PPP agreement, which was registered with the Treasury in August last year and was supposed to start on January 1 of this year, financial indicators and financing issues have changed somewhat due to the January and February events. This led to the fact that government obligations began to increase sharply within the framework of this project, and we agreed with a consortium of investors to review this project, maximize capital investments of investors and minimize government obligations. We have been negotiating all this time. And plus the question is about attracting an additional pool of investors. Relevant work is also being carried out here,” Bakhyt Sultanov explained.
