AKIPRESS.COM - Kazakhstan plans to carry out sweeping privatization, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF-2016) on Friday, reports TASS.

"We’re planning to cut the state’s share in the economy to 15% and carry out large-scale privatization," Nazarbayev said.

This decade will see the formation of a principally new model of Kazakhstan’s development to allow the country to join the group of the world’s top thirty developed states by the middle of the century, the Kazakh leader said.

"After starting with $400 per capita of the GDP, we have been able to expand the economy by 22 times and we finished the year 2014 with $13,500 per capita of the GDP," the Kazakh leader said.

Kazakhstan’s international reserves currently stand at about $100 billion and the Central Asian country has attracted $255 billion in foreign direct investment over the years of its independence, Nazarbayev said.

"There are plans for the next five years to attract $9 billion as part of cooperation with international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Asian Development Bank and the Islamic Bank. This is an important indicator of Kazakhstan’s economic attractiveness and international prestige," he said.