At the meeting of the Government chaired by the Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev, the Minister of National Economy Timur Suleimenov and the Minister of Finance Bakhyt Sultanov reported on concrete plans to fulfill the instructions of the Head of State given at the extended Government meeting of 9 February 2018.

According to Timur Suleimenov, the implementation of fiscal policy measures should ensure that by 2025, the tax revenues will be brought to 25% of GDP. In addition, the level of public debt will be taken for special control. To resolve this issue, the MNE RK, by the end of 2018, will conduct a work on amending the Concept of the National Fund for excluding the government's domestic debt from debt indicator calculations.

"In order to develop the competitive production and export potential of the country's enterprises further, an analysis of state support measures in this direction will be carried out jointly with the Ministry for Investments and Development and the Atameken NCE. According to the results of which, proposals will be worked out on the further algorithm of actions and implementation of measures to increase the number of "National Champions", which produce competitive export products," Timur Suleimenov said.

Also, within the framework of the ongoing structural reforms, there will be constant overall control over the implementation of the third direction "Industrialization and Economic Growth" of the Nation's Plan “100 Concrete Steps.”

The Ministry will continue the implementation of the Comprehensive Privatization Plan. To assess the work in this direction, this year, an analysis will be carried out with the calculation of the effect of privatization on the economy as a whole, on the state budget and on business.

"Since January 1 of the current year, the budgets of the 4th level have been introduced. For today, taxes already come to the budgets of villages, towns and rural districts with a population of more than 2,000 people," Timur Suleimenov summed up.

Reporting on the progress of the execution of the President’s instructions on his block of questions, Minister of Finance B. Sultanov said that on February 28 this year, MF is to launch the Astana-1 information system in the test mode. Full-scale launch is planned for April.

For the introduction of the Single Window principle, during the passage of customs procedures and the continuation of the implementation of electronic interaction, nine permitting documents (in the field of conformity, agriculture, sanitary and epidemiological well-being) on ​​the ASYCER platform were automated. This is also being implemented on the UNCTAD system platform.

"The commissioning of the relevant modules under these permits  is planned before October 1, 2018. For this we are launching the system in a test mode in May," Bakhyt Sultanov noted.

For the remaining 42 permits, which are necessary for customs clearance, the Astana-1 system will be integrated with the E-licensing state database.

The Minister of Finance said that on the basis of the current information system Electronic Invoices, the Virtual Storage module is being implemented as part of the World Bank project. Since 1 January 2019, it is planned to launch the module for all products.

"Work is also underway to introduce new methods of VAT administration with the use of blockchain technology in cooperation with PIT ACF, IBM and PWC. In August this year, it is planned to launch a prototype of a new information system," Bakhyt Sultanov said.

According to Minister Bakhyt Sultanov, in 2017 the number of tax and customs inspections has been reduced by 45%.

Regarding the national debt of the country, the head of the Ministry of Finance noted that it is planned to issue Eurobonds in tenge through the Euroclear system at the AIFC exchange. In order to diversify sources of borrowing, it is also planned to issue Islamic sukuk bonds.

"Financial support for the implementation of the President's Address "New Opportunities Under the Fourth Industrial Revolution" will be implemented during the clarification of the republican budget in the spring of this year. Return to the break-even point of the National Fund is forecasted a year earlier, that is, already in 2019 we will return to the policy of accumulating funds for future generations. This will be achieved through a phased reduction of the guaranteed transfer (up to 2 trillion tenge in 2020) and the refusal to attract a targeted transfer from 2018," Bakhyt Sultanov summed up.