Kazakhstan, China’s Xinjiang eye doubling trade

Kazakh Deputy Premier Serik Zhumangarin and Communist Party Secretary of Xinjiang met to discuss interaction issues as well as prospects to ramp up cooperation on December 5 in Ürümqi, Kazinform News Agency reports.

Xinjiang is a major trade partner of Kazakhstan among Chinese regions, which accounts for almost half of the total trade turnover between Kazakhstan and China. Last year, Kazakhstan’s trade with the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) rose 62% to 20.3 billion US dollars. In 9 months of this year, Kazakhstan and XUAR traded goods for 17.67 billion US dollars, a 22.46% growth.

The Heads of Kazakhstan and China set the task to increase the trade turnover between our countries to up to 100 billion US dollars. In this regard, we seek to double the mutual trade with XUAR… Our country could supply an additional 180 goods worth 1.6 billion US dollars, including products of metallurgy, petrochemical, food, chemical, machinery and construction sectors, stated Zhumangarin.

The Kazakh Deputy Premier hailed the joint work on establishing green corridors at checkpoints on Kazakh-Chinese border aimed to expedite the movement of agricultural products as well as suggested to expand the Nur Zholy – Khorgos checkpoint’s round-the-clock work practice to all road checkpoints.

The work is underway to open new checkpoints in Almaty (Narynkol-Muzart) and East Kazakhstan (Terekty-Aktobek) regions.

In a bid to promote shipping as an alternative to road and railway routes, Kazakhstan seeks to create Russia-Kazakhstan-China multimodal transit corridor across the transboundary Irtysh river, with initial cargo shipments of 2-2.5 million tons.

To develop this corridor, the opening of the fourth railway crossing Maikapchagay – Zimunay and construction of a river port near Tugyl village, Kazakhstan, is planned. Another promising project in promoting river transport is the development of a route across the transboundary Ili River from the Kazakh city of Konayev to China’s Yining, added Zhumangarin.

Up to 80% of China’s overland transport to Europe falls at Kazakhstan. In 9 months of 2024, the Middle Corridor’s transport volume exceeded the last year’s figure by 23% to amount 3.4 million tons. The figure is expected to rise to up to 10 million tons per year by 2030.

Zhumangarin stressed Kazakhstan’s commitment to meeting the growing demand for China’s cargo traffic to and from Europe. It was agreed to steadily increase container trains from 600 to 2,000 by 2029. The Kazakhstani side expressed interest in construction of a multimodal logistics terminal at the Khorgos station for storage and transshipment of dry goods, containers and grains.