Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Alikhan Smailov will visit Iran to discuss the expansion of bilateral trade, announced Kazakh ambassador to Tehran on Monday.
Speaking on the sidelines of a press conference in Tehran on the Mazhilis (parliament) and Maslikhats elections of Kazakhstan which will be held on January 19, Askhat Orazbay said two meetings of Iran-Kazakhstan Joint Economic Commission have been held in recent year.
It is planned to sign some new agreements between Iran and Kazakhstan during the visit of Smailov to Tehran which will be more beneficial for both sides in the future.
Point to the growing trade between his country and Iran, the envoy added that the Ports and Maritime Organization of Iran has prepared plans for development of trade with Kazakhstan.
“During the COVID pandemic, the road and rail transit of goods between the two countries via Turkmenistan stopped, but their trade has continued.”
Talking on the upcoming elections in Kazakhstan, Orazbay said the upcoming Mazhilis (the lower chamber of the Kazakh parliament) and the Maslikhats (local administrative bodies) elections will take place on March 19.
“President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev dissolved the Mazhilis and terminated the powers of the Maslikhats on January 19, when he announced the date of the elections for the lower chamber. Later, the Central Election Commission (CEC) set March 19 as the date for Maslikhat elections.
In his statement, President Tokayev said: “The holding of early elections of the Mazhilis and Maslikhats is dictated by the logic of the constitutional reform, supported by citizens at the national referendum. According to the referendum results, our country moved to new, fairer, and more competitive rules of formation of the representative branches of power.”
Tokayev first proposed the early elections of the Mazhilis and Maslikhats in his Address to the Nation on September 1 last year.
“Thanks to the constitutional reforms implemented last year in Kazakhstan, registering political parties has become significantly easier. For example, the registration threshold has been reduced from 20,000 to 5,000 members. The minimum requirement for the number of regional party representations was also reduced from 600 to 200 people.”
As a result, several new political parties have registered before the upcoming election. Overall, seven parties are now registered in the country.
CEC has so far accredited 111 international observers for the elections from three international organizations (the OSCE ODIHR, the Interparliamentary Assembly of the CIS member states, CIS observer mission) and 16 foreign states (PRC, the Netherlands, South Korea, Belgium, Kyrgyzstan, Thailand, Armenia, Georgia, France, Iran, Britain, Slovakia and Estonia).