Kazakhstan is being offered to create an analogue of the Mexican maciladoras system in regions bordering Russia in order to integrate enterprises into the industrial chains of the neighbouring market, said Kuanysh Zhaikov, a Partner of the Center for Research And Consulting (CRC).

As part of a study of possible areas of socio-economic development of Kazakhstan, experts from the Centre for Research and Consulting (CRC), the Centre for Applied Research "TALAP", as well as units of Whiteshield Partners for the Eurasia region have developed a number of recommendations on the specialization of different regions of the country, which were included in the work presented in early May on the development of human capital and labor market in the country.

Experts remind that currently there is a leakage of labor resources from the Northern regions to Russia, while, according to them, it would be possible to create production facilities in Kazakhstan's Northern border regions, which currently employ migrants from Kazakhstan in Russia.

"Young people from the North-Western regions of the country still leave for Russia, and the solution is obvious: integrate these regions into the supply chain of Russian million-plus cities, create assembly plants in the field of mechanical engineering, or just launching the food production would be fine, but with a focus on the neighboring Russian market. There is an experience of Mexico, which has built an entire production system along the border with the United States, and the same can be repeated in Kazakhstan," said Zhaikov during the webinar on the results of this study.

The experience of Mexico refers to the system of maquiladoras created since the 1960s on the border of this country with the United States - Export Processing Zones with preferential tax treatment for businesses that placed their capacities there. The name of the system comes from the Spanish word "maquila", which means payment to the miller for grain milling: an analogy is that the enterprises of this system were engaged in the production of goods and services for export on the basis of processing of foreign materials received in the regime of returned import.

In other words, American customers placed orders on them and provided raw materials for the production of finished products, which were then sold in the United States. In order for such a project to be implemented on the territory of Kazakhstan, in addition to orders from Russia, a high concentration of labor is also needed in the regional centers of the border regions, the speaker noted.

"Accordingly, rural youth in these regions needs to be pulled together in regional centers through the system of technical and occupational training in order to get the necessary concentration of labor," he said.

At the same time, the authors of the study noted the need for primary industrialization in the South of the country, where the majority of the population lives, mainly employed in the agricultural sector. The expert noted that so far in Kazakhstan, new industrial enterprises have tried to deploy on ready-made industrial sites in Karaganda, Pavlodar, Ust-Kamenogorsk and Almaty, but now it is needed more in terms of changing the structure of employment.

"In this regard, we propose to create there an oversized specialized infrastructure - special zones, industrial sites. There is an interesting idea to create an international industrial center Arys, which is located on a convenient railway dead end, along two important railway lines, to minimize bureaucratic obstacles, it can be integrated with the AIFC, create a large industrial point in the South," Zhaikov said.

At the same time, he proposed to reorient the "Economy of simple things" program to the South, the total amount of funding for which recently reached 1 trillion tenge, due to the fact that projects in the South will be supported by excessive cheap labor and a large domestic market due to the concentration of the population in these regions. At the same time, the regional roll of this program will gradually transfer workers from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector, the speaker believes.

"But in the West of Kazakhstan, the situation is more complicated, because natural resources are being depleted there, and settlements are not very suitable for life. In the East and in the center, reindustrialization is needed, and it should be initiated by local financial and industrial groups, they need to ensure the flow of employees of industrial enterprises to other sectors. And in the West, most likely, a serious package of measures will be required from the state to relocate residents, " concluded the representative of the CRC.