​President: Kazakhstan decreased poverty rate 20fold since attaining independence

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev has touched upon Kazakhstan's achievements over the years of independence at the plenary session of the 8th Astana Economic Forum today.

"Kazakhstan does its best to respond to the global challenges that may harm its prosperity in the future. Standing for peace and stability in the region, we were the first country in the world to voluntarily abandon our nuclear arsenal and close all nuclear test sites. Kazakhstan gradually solidifies bilateral relations with its partner-countries and is an active participant of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)," President Nazarbayev told the participants of the session.

According to the President, as a multi-ethnic country Kazakhstan is committed to the ideas of tolerance, inter-faith and inter-ethnic accord. Nursultan Nazarbayev went on to say that Astana regularly hosts the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions and its next session will take place in early June.

"Over the years of independence we have created our economy from scratch. Over these years Kazakhstan has become the CIS leader in terms of attraction of foreign direct investments - more than $200 billion. We built our new capital Astana in the steppe and it has become Kazakhstan's pride, the driver behind our economy's growth and demonstrated our capabilities," the Head of State noted.

President Nazarbayev also stressed that Kazakhstan had managed to decrease its poverty rate 20fold from 60% to 2.9% since attaining independence.

Source: infrom.kz