Highlights from Toqayev's speech at The Meeting with The President of the European Council

On 27 October state heads from Central Asia met with The President of the European Council. Here are the highlights from Toqayev's speech at the meeting.

“The world around us is rapidly changing. Central Asia is feeling threatened by unprecedented geopolitical tensions. Today it is extremely important to strengthen mutual trust and the spirit of cooperation in the heart of Eurasia. In this difficult time, we, and those who are in Central Asia and Europe, need to build bridges, not walls,”

“Over the past 10 years, the EU has invested more than $120 billion in Central Asian countries, which is actually 40% of foreign direct investment in the region. About 70% of all these funds were sent to Kazakhstan. For 8 months since the beginning of this year, the volume of trade between Kazakhstan and the EU countries has reached almost 30 billion dollars, an increase of more than 40% compared to the same period last year. Today, about three thousand companies with the participation of European capital are successfully operating in various sectors of the economy of Kazakhstan,”

“Kazakhstan can offer more than 100 types of processed goods worth about $1.5 billion a year in industries such as engineering, iron and steel production, food processing and agriculture. A promising topic is food security. As you know, we annually export more than 5 million tons of wheat, including to the EU countries. Over the past year, our exports of food products to the EU increased by 32% and exceeded $630 million. Therefore, Kazakhstan could continue to supply agricultural products and mineral fertilizers to the EU countries. A separate topic is green energy,”