Minister of Investments and Development Zhenis Kassymbek reported on the measures taken to further develop civil aviation at the Government meeting chaired by Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev.

According to Zhenis Kassymbek, for today, all restrictions on flights to the EU countries have been removed from Kazakhstan airlines — five domestic airlines (Air Astana, SCAT, Komlux, Kazairjet and Prime Aviation) have the right to fly to Europe.

In the period of November 22-30, 2017, the ICAO Commission audited the aviation security, which is a comprehensive check of the airport security system. According to preliminary estimates, ICAO experts note significant progress in Kazakhstan and it is expected that we will seriously improve the indicators in the ICAO rating. Official results will be published by February 1, 2018.

"On the instruction of the Head of the State, within the framework of the "100 Concrete Steps,” the transition to the UK model of state regulation of the industry is planned. This will make it possible to meet the requirements of ICAO for the availability of qualified inspectors and achieve the goal of 80% in terms of flight safety," Zhenis Kassymbek said.

The minister recalled that in the pilot mode, during the Expo-2017 in June 2017, a 72-hour visa-free regime was introduced for the citizens of the PRC, who transit through Astana and Almaty airports by Kazakh airlines, which was recently extended until the end of 2018. To further develop the transit potential, the issue of a similar regime for transit citizens of India is being worked out.

To date, Kazakhstan has almost completed the modernization of air transport infrastructure — for the years of independence, 15 runways and 11 terminals of Kazakhstan airports were reconstructed. For the development of small aircraft, construction and reconstruction of 5 airfields with a hard surface and 11 aerodromes with a ground covering are envisaged.

"Totally in 2017, Kazakhstan airports serviced 14.2 million passengers, which is 17% more than in 2016 (about 12.2 million passengers). Last year, as part of the execution of the Nurly Zhol state program, the construction of a new terminal of Nursultan Nazarbayev Airport in Astana was completed, which will allow Astana to be developed as a regional hub in Central Asia," Zhenis Kassymbek summarized.

In the course of the discussion, President of Air Astana Peter Foster delivered a speech on the activities of the airline.

Summing up the discussion, Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev noted that the issue of the development of civil aviation is very relevant and important. For today, the infrastructure of domestic civil aviation is brought to international standards. As a positive moment, the Prime Minister noted the planned increase in passenger traffic in 2018 to 800 thousand people.

In this regard, Bakytzhan Sagintayev instructed the Ministry of Investments and Development, together with other interested departments, to consider the introduction of a 72-hour visa-free regime for Indian citizens with a billion of population. In addition, an instruction was given to the relevant state bodies to regulate tariffs for the provision of airport services in terms of reducing them, if this does not contradict the domestic antimonopoly legislation.

Control over the execution of instructions is assigned to Deputy Prime Minister Askar Mamin.