A businessman from Kazakhstan is ready to participate in the restoration of the liberated Azerbaijani territories: "We considered it expedient to offer the government of Azerbaijan the Kazakh experience of creating Smart City systems."
Report presents an interview with Kazakh businessman Kuanysh Kalizhanov.
- Over the past two years, you have been running a business project in Azerbaijan. Could you tell us about your experience of setting up a business in our country? How can you assess the conditions for doing business in Azerbaijan? What business difficulties have you encountered during this time?
-Yes, indeed, for quite a long time, I have been in Baku as part of the project for the installation of elevators of the German ‘Thyssenkrupp Elevator’ concern. We are carrying out a project for a large construction company.
Construction projects like ours are a driver for developing the local market for reputable and internationally recognized brands of quality tools and a fleet of construction equipment.
We have to work in a multitasking, multi-vector environment. We are the Azerbaijani branch of a German concern represented by its Russian division, operating with a Turkish company on an Azerbaijani project.
Under these conditions, it is necessary to correctly combine the features of local customs, tax law, accounting, and reporting systems with the requirements and standards of a parent company and a customer’s company.
Sometimes the unification of construction drawings, building codes, and parameters takes effort and time, and we have to change installation technologies literally on the go. There are great merit and help of Azerbaijani specialists in this. The installers are entirely local staff, and the guys are hardworking.
In general, it is not difficult to register a business in Azerbaijan. Under the Doing Business rating, compiled according to the World Bank reports, Azerbaijan is in the top ten countries after Georgia and Uzbekistan.
I was also pleased with the system for providing public services through ASAN, the availability of automation of SMS permits in quarantine conditions.
- How do you assess the current state of trade and economic relations between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan? What, in your opinion, is necessary for the development of our trade relations?
- Firstly, $200 million in turnover in recent years is not much for our countries, given the potential. Foreign trade turnover can be increased to $1 billion, and this is real.
Secondly, the business communities of our countries are poorly aware of each other’s capabilities. I hope that the trading houses opened in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan will implement their plans to bring the entrepreneurs of our countries closer together.
Thirdly, Kazakhstan’s commitments under the Customs Union shouldn’t restrict trade and investment freedom in Azerbaijan.
Fourthly, there is an imbalance in mutual trade, and a significant share of the turnover (about 80 percent) accounts for the export of Kazakh wheat, oil products, some types of oil and gas engineering; Azerbaijan’s export to Kazakhstan stands at $20-40 million (10-20 percent).
Fifthly, in addition to trade, it is interesting to evaluate projects with Kazakh companies’ participation in Azerbaijan and Azerbaijani companies in Kazakhstan.
We need to break outdated and obsolete stereotypes. We, the people of Kazakhstan, must clearly understand that Azerbaijani builders know how to construct well, moreover, in areas with high seismic activity. For example, in Nur-Sultan, the Caspian Service company has built several residential complexes based on Azerbaijani projects. In my native Aktobe region, the well-known Azerbaijani company AzVirt is taking part in road construction. Everyone knows that drones are being assembled in Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan is a unique country with nine climatic zones, which allow growing fruits and vegetables exotic for Kazakhstan.
The possibilities of the Azerbaijani industry are immense.
In turn, Kazakhstan has long traditions of heavy and oil engineering, animal husbandry, sheep breeding, chemical industry, and other niches, and Azerbaijanis aren’t well aware of their uniqueness.
To mutually complement each other, we need to get to know each other intensively, visit each other more often, and harmonize tax and customs legislation, insurance, pension systems, and unify standards and regulations. Work is required to remove administrative and other barriers between our countries.
- As you know, last year has become historic for Azerbaijan - the country has restored long-awaited justice and territorial integrity. Restoration work has already begun in the liberated territories. As a Kazakh business representative, are you interested in participating in Karabakh’s restoration, and what can you offer today?
- I am glad to congratulate the people of Azerbaijan on the victory and liberation of their lands! I sympathize with the families of the killed martyrs. I happened to be a witness of historical events. Everything happened before my eyes. The liberation war began on September 27. Shusha was liberated on November 8. On November 10, at 4 a.m., all of Baku rejoiced: Victory! On December 10, the Victory Parade was held.
Watching the videos from the liberated territories, I thought about the enormous amount of work Azerbaijan has to do to restore these lands. It is clear that we, brotherly peoples, shouldn’t have stood aside.
From my side, a letter was sent to the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Azerbaijan with proposals for the participation of my company in cooperation with Kazakh partner companies in the restoration of the liberated territories.
You have to be realistic: Turkey’s proximity to the liberated Azerbaijani territories and its competence in the field of construction are undeniable arguments.
Therefore, we must rely on our strong competencies and experience in those areas in which we have enormously advanced: digitalization of economic sectors, including based on the application of data from the Earth remote sensing space system, geoinformation technologies, technologies in the field of renewable energy sources.
Besides, I spoke in detail about Kazakh business’s competitive opportunities in information technology, security, and the Smart City concept.
By the way, these instructions were voiced on January 26 this year by President of Azerbaijan, Mr. Ilham Aliyev, to the newly appointed Minister of Transport, Communications and High Technologies Rashad Nabiyev: "Cities and villages in the liberated territories should be created based on the concept of smart-city, smart-village."
In this niche, we can be competitive and in demand. We are well aware that it is very important to use technologies and digital solutions that will create a methodological basis for engineering and design work at the initial stage.
Kazakhstan has a very authoritative school of designers, engineers in the design and construction of hydraulic, energy, and civil structures in seismic zones. Besides, experience has been gained in digital solutions for creating Smart City, geoscanning, creating a base of engineering communications, and monitoring.
In this regard, we considered it expedient to propose to Azerbaijan’s government to familiarize itself and note the Kazakh experience of creating a Smart City.
In this context, we are asking to consider and submit our proposals to create a Smart City to the draft socio-economic concept for the restoration of the territories liberated.
The proposals are in line with the program of the initial stage of the concept of providing an integrated approach to the restoration and development of territories and include addressing issues of infrastructure management and security.
Considering the upcoming events for the development of Shusha city, we would suggest considering our design experience in security systems for the city and strategic facilities.
This concept includes an integrated operational management system of the city and the region based on intelligent video surveillance and response.
An essential tool for monitoring the country’s security is the Integrated Monitoring System for Air, Water, and Soil Quality. The system allows online, with hourly updates, forming a map of pollution (contamination) of the country and region’s environment.
The operational control center can continuously monitor and respond to latent human-made and terrorist threats.
Another important direction is creating a Geoportal system or a digital map of the city, including all underground, ground, and above-ground communications and infrastructure. This would make it possible to form a digital passport of each object and a digital map of the city as a whole from the very beginning of the restoration survey, design and construction, and installation work.
The next step is drawing up a 3D project of the city. Smart City’s concept includes blocks of transport, housing and communal services, citizens’ appeals, organization of medical services, digital burial application, monitoring of urban transport facilities, tourism, education, etc.
All together provide tremendous opportunities for city management and the safety of its inhabitants. We are ready to communicate with the expert community to develop useful solutions.
In addition to all of those mentioned above, I would like to share my observations, which seem interesting. Traveling around the country, I try to assess the potential of the places I visit.
Tourism in Azerbaijan can become a significant source of employment and a particular industry. We are little familiar with the unique possibilities of natural and historical parks. There are resources here in the digitalization of tourism, visualization of routes and attractions.
When I visited the Shamakhi Astrophysical Observatory, the weather and time of day didn’t allow me to observe the stars through a telescope. A lot of tourists, like me, come here. Here Nasraddin Tusi himself would have ordered to build a planetarium using his database.
By the way, despite the modernization of telescopes, which are already historical, we could jointly develop a program for modernizing the observatory from digitalization of surveys to equipping a unique planetarium.
In Kazakhstan, I was in charge of an entertainment complex that includes the Oceanarium, Jungle, and other areas. The Oceanarium in Nur-Sultan is unique in that it is the most remote object from the sea.
Naturally, I was interested in the question, is there an Oceanarium in Baku, in the sea city? After all, a vast expense item for us in the steppe was the preparation of seawater, for which we bought tens of tons of sea salt.
To prepare seawater in Baku, only its purification is required. As far as I know, the Oceanarium project was implemented in Moscow in Krasnogorsk by the Crocus Group. Judging by the website, it is an excellent project. Investors have achieved a lot. Most importantly, I see how this project can develop further in the retail sphere’s new reality when the entertainment format comes to the fore.
Baku’s urban economy is a complex organism, including transport communications and mechanisms, including the subway and elevators.
Of great importance is the digitalization of the monitoring system for equipment that operates in an intensive mode and is subject to wear and tear. It is necessary to move from responding to repair signals to preventing wear and tear of mechanisms and equipment.
For this, we need a digital history of each mechanism from its production to the date of the last oil change with full detail.
Such a history needs to be transformed from the paper carrier of orders into a tablet and smartphone.
The real owner of a smart city or a smart village will have all communications in his or her tablet, a 3D city project, access to any video camera with video analytics.
The owner of the city must instantly receive information about risks and threats and promptly respond to them.
In short, the topic of digitalization is fascinating and endless, so in this interview, I will limit myself to those mentioned above.