Today during a press conference in the Government of Kazakhstan, the Governor of the Astana International Financial Center Kairat Kelimbetov spoke about the main directions of development of the AIFC and the measures taken to establish it as one of the largest financial hubs of the Eurasian region.

Kairat Kelimbetov said that within the framework of the activities of the AIFC it is planned to develop six major priority directions. The most important of them is the development of capital market.  

“Kazakhstan’s financial sector is concentrated more on the work of bank institutions and the other traditional instruments of cooperation with citizens. We are working on creation of so-called banking financial community, and the capital markets will significantly improve the situation in the financial sector of Kazakhstan and create the regional platform for the development of stock markets in our region,” K. Kelimbetov said.

Second and third priorities, according to K. Kelimbetov, are tightly connected with each other, these are management of private and state assets, funds, as well as the management of private parties’ welfare.

The fourth direction is Islamic financing.

Kelimbetov stressed that a number of major summits of Islamic cooperation was held this year, including in Kazakhstan. In general, according to the AIFC Governor in the direction of Islamic finance, Kazakhstan has the opportunity to become a leading country both in Central Asia and the Eurasian region as a whole.

The fifth major direction, according to K. Kelimbetov, is new financial technologies.

"You know that the Head of State recently held a meeting on issues of digitization of Kazakhstan's economy. The program "Digital Kazakhstan" is one of the most important and priority areas in the work of the Government. The Head of State also instructed the leadership of AIFC to become the leading center of expertise on the development of new financial technologies. In this direction we are in close connection with all the world's leading players," K. Kelimbetov said.

As a sixth direction, he noted the introduction and development of tools for "green financing". In this regard, the high-tech platform Astana Expo-2017 will have to provide the physical infrastructure for research in the field of green technologies, while AIFC will be its financial component.