Today, during the briefing at the press center of the Government, Vice Minister of Energy Gani Sadybekov noted that the issue of stimulating business to use green technologies is of special significance. A separate impulse was the Expo-2017 International Specialized Exhibition.

The Head of State in his annual Address to the people of Kazakhstan "New Opportunities Under the Fourth Industrial Revolution" stressed that it is important to stimulate business to invest in green technologies.

"Based on the results of the exhibition, 105 technologies were selected for further implementation in our country. We saw that taking care of the environment through the use of green technologies aimed at minimizing the impact on the environment is profitable and economically feasible," the Vice Minister said.

Gani Sadibekov said that the opening of the International Center for the Development of Green Technologies and Investment Projects "Future Energy" on the basis of the Institute for the Development of Electric Power and Energy Saving JSC is planned for June this year , which will develop a register of the best available technologies, issue expert opinions and recommendations in the field of the use of technologies to the subjects of industrial-innovative activity for the further implementation of projects.

The center will be created as a legacy of the International Exhibition and will be located in the Zone of Best Practices on the territory of the exhibition.

Keeping the register will be one of the measures to stimulate business to move to the green economy, because, firstly, this will allow obtaining a comprehensive environmental permit, according to which the nature users of developed countries work; secondly, to implement green projects, the decision to invest in which is accepted by many international development banks.

In addition, the Ministry plans to work together with interested central state bodies and public organizations to work out measures of state support and green financing, envisaged for green projects.

Also, the Vice Minister Gani Sadibekov commented on the issue of updating the Environmental Code, which was raised by the Head of State in his Address to the People of Kazakhstan "New Opportunities Under the Fourth Industrial Revolution."

According to him, at present a working group has been created from among the representatives of interested bodies to develop significant changes and additions to the existing Environmental Code.

"In 2018, it is planned to develop the concept of the Environmental Code and include it in the plan of legislative works. The Draft Code is planned to be submitted to the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan in December 2019," the Vice Minister said.

Along with this, Gani Sadibekov noted that constant work is being done to improve the national legislation in terms of reducing the burden on business. Thus, a system for assessing the degree of risks in the field of environmental protection has been implemented, which has made it possible to reduce the number of inspections almost twofold, taking into account the nature of the activities of nature users: from 3177 inspections in 2016 to 1753 in 2017. At the same time, the volume of environmental activities funded by nature users for 2017 amounted to 110.8 billion tenge, which is almost twice as high as in 2015 (59.1 billion tenge).

Thus, as a result of the audit, in order to reduce the administrative burden on business, the control and supervisory functions were reduced by 30%.