A consular department of the Kazakh Embassy was opened in Bratislava on October 15 with an eye toward strengthening and extending the friendly Kazakh-Slovak relations, the TASR newswire wrote.
The goal includes expanding trade and commercial, as well as scientific and technological initiatives, cultural relations and tourism. The Kazakh consulate will issue visas of various categories - tourist, private, business or for investors and other relevant documents. It will also keep record of Kazakhs, who have a permanent or temporal stay within its consular territory. Kazakh assigned-consul Akmaral Kinzebayeva and Kazakh honorary consul in Slovakia, Štefan Rosina, took part in the ceremony.
"So far they (Slovaks) had to go to Prague or Vienna in order to get a (Kazakh) visa, now they can acquire them in Bratislava," Kinzebajevova told TASR, adding that hundreds of Slovaks ask for the visa every year.
Business contacts between both countries should be improved by trade missions of Slovakia to the second biggest country of the former Soviet Union and the ninth largest country in the world. The soonest one should take place under Rosina's remit this year or at the beginning of 2010.
According to Rosina, when it comes to co-operation, Kazakhstan is mostly interested in projects in the sphere of engineering, pharmaceutics, transport and energy, including crude oil processing. Slovakia reached a positive trade balance with Kazakhstan last year with a total turnover of €61 million. The export represented €41.2 million and import €19.9 million. In the first half of 2009, the turnover represented €14.9 million, with export reaching €12.4 million and import €2.5 million. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
