Int’l Finance Center to appear in Astana

/By AzerNews/

By Laman Sadigova

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has signed a law on creation of Astana International Finance Center.

The Center will have a territory with clearly defined boundaries and its own executive authority. It will be established on the basis of the already built objects for the World Expo 2017 exhibition in Astana.

The project’s participants will be exempt from corporative, individual and income taxes for a long period. They will also be allowed to bring foreign work force to the Center. To create particularly attractive conditions in the Center, special tax, currency, visa regime, as well as the mode of attracting foreign labor will be provided.

Tax exemption is established for a period of 50 years before January 1, 2066. Foreign employees will also be exempted from personal income tax.

Kazakhstan’s National Bank has earlier announced that 6 billion tenges will be allocated from the Bank’s budget to create the Astana International Finance Center.

The center will operate on special legal regime, different from the legislation of Kazakhstan.

“Our focus will be based on introducing the principles of English law, a preferential tax regime and an independent financial court. We are confident that the Astana financial centre will be the core of the financial infrastructure in Kazakhstan, and in the future will turn into a financial hub of the whole Central Asian region,” Nazarbayev said addressing the Astana Economic Forum (AEF) in May 2015.