On August 27-29, a group of leading Uzbek media outlets visited Nur-Sultan, the capital city of Kazakhstan. Within the framework of the press tour, organized by Astana International Exchange (AIX), journalists and media representatives were informed about the activities of the center, in particular, in the sphere of international stock exchange.

During the event, Chief Executive Officer of Astana International Exchange Timothy Bennett, who earlier served as CEO of NZX, the operator of New Zealand’s securities and derivatives markets and provider of trade, post-trade and data services, spoke about priority areas of development and answered questions of journalists.

“We create the infrastructure that enables buyers and sellers to sell different products,” Tim Bennett said. “It is very much similar to markets anywhere in the world that sell fruits and vegetables. We have built the infrastructure, we have built the market and now we need to find buyers and sellers,” he explained.

According to him, capital market, which is considered a driver of economic growth, is poorly developed in Central Asia. “There is a lot of work to do here,” Bennett said.

“There has been a lot more changes in regulation systems since the start of the global financial crisis. This created lots of difficulties for global investment banks and investors to invest in emerging markets. As they don’t understand the laws and regulations well in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and are afraid of cases of money laundering, financial risks, they are reluctant to enter these markets,” AIX CEO noted. “The positive thing though is that there are hundreds of billions of dollars in frontier market funds ready to be invested in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. That’s because these countries have good economic growth prospects, relatively stable governments and are close to large markets such as China, India and Russia.”

During his presentation, Tim Bennett explained in detail the ways of attracting investments to Central Asia and Uzbekistan in particular.