Historic Cooperation in the Procurement System from Samruk-Kazyna and EBRD

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Kazakhstan Sovereign Wealth Fund "Samruk-Kazyna" and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), stipulating that the fund's procurement system will be used in investment projects financed by the bank. This signature gained even greater symbolic importance as it coincided with the 20th anniversary of the fund's establishment. According to the agreement, the fund's digital procurement portal and infrastructure will be used in EBRD-financed projects, but full compliance with the bank's own transparency and procurement rules will be ensured during this process. This document, signed by Samruk-Kazyna Chairman of the Management Board Nurlan Jakupov and EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso, is one of the rare examples where international financial organizations approve the use of a local infrastructure instead of their own systems. This situation is considered an extremely important milestone in terms of Kazakhstan's institutional maturity and its success in procurement standards in the region.

This step was also defined by international experts, such as the World Bank's former Global Procurement Director Vinay Sharma, as a regional precedent representing a major first. Generally, international financial institutions prefer to apply their own strict and standard rules in the infrastructure projects they finance. However, the EBRD's acceptance of Samruk-Kazyna's system is official proof that Kazakhstan's digital ecosystem fully complies with global standards in terms of transparency, competition, and efficiency. Moreover, Samruk-Kazyna has the distinction of being the only institution outside the borders of the European Union whose procurement system has been officially verified by the EBRD. This visionary cooperation has the potential to lay a solid foundation for other large-scale investment projects to be realized in the country in the future.

Samruk-Kazyna's journey over the last two decades is one of the clearest proofs that the country has made a massive transformation from external dependence to local production and economic independence. The procurement system, which had a highly fragmented structure consisting of Traditional procedures two decades ago, has now transformed into a modern digital ecosystem. While the local content ratio in the fund's procurements was around 50% at the beginning of the 2010s, this rate has startlingly reached 83% by 2025. This economic leap is based on the systematic implementation of import substitution programs and the realization of more than 16 concrete measures that directly support local producers, such as customs exemptions and procurement preferences. Thanks to the 30% advance payment opportunity and shortened payment terms provided to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), local entrepreneurs have largely breathed a sigh of relief and significantly expanded their number of employees by increasing employment.

One of the most innovative steps taken by the fund to contribute to economic development is the 'offtake contracts' mechanism, initiated in 2018, which guarantees long-term product demand. This revolutionary system has provided entrepreneurs with the self-confidence and financial security needed to establish production facilities by offering a guaranteed market for their products. In this context, more than 1250 contracts worth 607 billion tenge have been signed to date, and in parallel, 329 billion tenge of direct investment has been attracted to the real sector. Thanks to the 104 approved major production projects, approximately 3,000 new permanent jobs have been created across the country, providing a local and permanent solution to the unemployment problem. Thanks to this vision, using high technology, Kazakhstan has now achieved the capacity to produce strategic products within its own borders, such as transformers, industrial reactors, pump equipment, fully cast wheels, and specialty chemicals, which were previously entirely imported.

How local producers benefit from these supports and grow can be clearly observed in the real-life experience of IVM Yatırım Evi. By participating in the KazTransOil tender, the company won the bid for the production of winter work clothes and gained great strategic strength from the 30% advance payment mechanism provided by the fund during this process. Thanks to this financial support, the enterprise increased its personnel from 30 to 130, modernized its production capacity with state-of-the-art machines, and skyrocketed its turnover from 1 billion tenge to 2.5 billion tenge in just two years. Reaching an annual production capacity of 200 thousand units, the company has also localized its supply chain by establishing strong ties with domestic raw material suppliers. All these developments are not just a company's success story, but also very clear proof of the unique and critical role of the Samruk-Kazyna fund in Kazakhstan's macroeconomic development and especially its vision for export-oriented industrialization.