CEO Survey press conference at the Astana Economic Forum
On 15 June 2017, as part of the Astana Economic Forum, PwC Kazakhstan, within PwC’s 20th Global CEO Survey 2017, released the results of the 5th Annual CEO Survey Kazakhstan.
This year, almost 1,400 executives from 80 countries, including more than 56 CEOs of companies in Kazakhstan, shared their thoughts about the challenges facing the private sector within the framework of the global CEO Survey.
CEOs of Kazakhstan companies were aimed at successful accomplishment of tactical and medium-term objectives and confidently predicted increased revenue for their business in 2017. In this respect, they surpassed the expectations of Russian colleagues and agreed with the opinion of foreign CEOs, and the optimism indicator jumped from 65% to 84%. Gradual improvement of the commodity market environment helped give Kazakhstanш business leaders’ confidence that their companies’ revenue would increase in the next 12 months.
In response to the usual question about relationships between business and government, the fight against corruption moved from second to first place – two-thirds of company CEOs thought corruption was the most serious threat to business. Nearly half of the respondents mentioned the need to improve the country’s business climate and ensure the rule of law in all areas of government activities. Incidentally, business leaders gave the worst rating of all to the effectiveness of the government’s fight against corruption and in training highly skilled staff, while ensuring rule of law had a slightly better rating. In addition, nearly a third thought that government authorities were successfully promoting Kazakhstan as an attractive country for investors. Nearly half of the respondents were willing to help the government improve investment attractiveness, while slightly fewer were ready to help train highly skilled staff.
We asked the CEOs to comment on important upcoming events in 2017, such as the Expo 2017 International Exhibition and the startup of the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC). Most CEOs still do not see any obvious influence of these events on their business, but do not rule out this possibility in future. The CEOs mentioned that such large-scale events would attract many visitors to the capital from neighbouring countries and abroad, and would help promote Kazakhstan in international investment communities.
