You're reading: Russia, China, Ukraine Kazakhstan’s closest partners

Russia, China and Ukraine have topped the list of Kazakhstan's closest partners drawn up by the Rating.kz agency.

The study ranked 39 partner countries of Kazakhstan according to the frequency of top level meetings in the past year, mutual trade volume and the amount of investment in Kazakhstan.

Russia has become the undisputed leader of the ranking with a 16.3% ($6.845 billion) share in Kazakhstan’s foreign trade and a 15.3% (nearly $11 billion) share in the total volume of investment in the country. Between July 2011 and July 2012 the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarabyev held four official meetings with the Presidents of Russia Dmitry Medvedev (former) and Vladimir Putin (current).

China is second on the list accounting for 16.8% ($7.056 billion) of Kazakhstan’s foreign trade and 7.3% ($5.3 billion) of the investment.

Ukraine came third with 4.2% ($1.8 billion) and 1.1% ($774.3 million) respectively.

Meanwhile, Belarus, despite being a member of the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space, ended up in the unexpected 11th place. According to the study, the high frequency of political contacts (3rd place in the rating) is not producing the desired economic payback (21st position in trade, 20th in investment).

Germany, France, the U.S., Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, the Netherlands and South Korea round up the top ten of Kazakhstan’s foreign partners.

The study has found that Kazakhstan has close economic and political ties with about 20 countries, mainly located in the CIS and Europe, as well as China and the U.S.

At the same time the country’s attempts to build closer relations with the countries of the Middle East and Southeast Asia have not been very successful so far.