The International Trade Center Highly Appreciated Kazakhstan’s Work on Training Exporters.

On May 17, 2023 in Almaty, representatives of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, together with international consultants and EU representatives summed up the implementation of an educational project to train entrepreneurs on the rules of foreign trade within the framework of the «Ready4Trade- Central Asia» project funded by the European Union.

This seminar was timed to coincide with the Second European Union- Central Asia Economic Forum, which took place on May 18-19, 2023.

The participants of the event also shared their experience in implementing online training and conducting offline seminars for beginning and active exporters.

During the event, the Government of Kazakhstan (Ministry of Trade and Integration and “QazTrade” JSC), received a letter of thanks from the ITC which highly assessed the effectiveness of the implementation of the exporter training program in the country; and, in turn, the “QazTradeAcademy” educational portal launched in September 2022 was noted as the best work among all CA countries.

The participants of the event also shared their experience in implementing online training and conducting offline seminars for beginning and active exporters.

According to the head of QazTradeAcademy, department director of “QazTrade” JSC, PhD Ainur Amirbekova, from July 2022 to May 2023, offline trainings were held in 15 cities of Kazakhstan for small and medium-sized businesses, which covered 1,500 participants. More than 500 entrepreneurs have been trained online so far. During this time, more than 2,000 participants were certified, who gained professional knowledge and increased their competence in the rules of international trade, 57% of which were women.

“QazTrade” JSC has implemented a useful project, on the site of which there is a collaboration of government, higher educational institutions and the private sector,” said Ainur Amirbekova.

According to her, the training of exporters has become one of the key instruments of non-financial support for QazTrade, the demand for which is growing every year. Domestic producers are offered free courses on various nuances of export activities, and training is conducted by both highly qualified experts of the company and foreign consultants specializing in the peculiarities of the markets of individual countries.

“The learning platform contains 7 modular courses available online, as well as 49 webinars on 3 levels of difficulty. There are plans to develop 5 more general courses for the CA countries and two special courses for Kazakhstani business representatives,” – summed up Ainur Amirbekova.

“The export management training program is the key to unlocking the potential of the CA private sector and moving towards export diversification,” said Yuri Skaskevich, representative of the EU delegation and curator of the program.

In turn, Pierre Bontonneau, ITC’s Senior Trade Facilitation Adviser, said the regional training program is a timely response to the needs of the private sector. As a result of the event, the participants reached an understanding of the need for further even more active cooperation of curators of training courses with industry organizations and associations, Kazakhstani universities, as well as with regional akimats (local authority) to conduct online and offline seminars.

The «Ready4Trade-Central Asia» project is a 4-year project funded by the EU and implemented by the ITC in close cooperation with national partners. The goal of the project is to contribute to the overall sustainable and inclusive economic development of the CA countries through the development of intra-regional and international trade in CA. The beneficiaries of the «Ready4Trade» project in CA are governments, small and medium-sized enterprises, and in particular women-led business support enterprises.