The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is actively negotiating with the American tech corporation Apple and the Swedish furniture and home goods company IKEA to open their representative offices in Kazakhstan, QazMonitor reports.
"Our conditions in the negotiations are different for each brand. In the case of Apple, offering to open its production in Kazakhstan is, in my opinion, illogical," said Deputy Foreign Minister Almas Aidarov at a briefing to the SCC.
According to him, Kazakhstan has no competitive advantage in the production of smartphones.
"We do not have skilled labor nor a sufficient number of processed rare earth metals to be used in these products. There is no cheap labor," added the deputy minister.
With Apple, Kazakhstan is negotiating the opening of a representative trade office in Almaty. The company said that this kind of question takes them about 3-4 years to work through.
On the possibility of IKEA moving to Kazakhstan, Aidarov commented:
"They have considered our market several times, and we provided sites and other things. But the company is still thinking since it is not so profitable to abandon assets in Russia. IKEA also has not completely left Russia, so the supplies still come from there.”