17.12.2023 [News]
Vice Minister Aidar Zhakupov made the announcement during an online conference hosted by BNews.kz, the Kazakh state news agency Kazinform.com reported on Wednesday.
“The financing of science has increased by 30 percent over a few last years,” Kazinform.com reported Zhakupov as saying. “In 2006, financing from budget made around KZT 14 billion ($94.0 million USD), in 2009 the figures were KZT 17 billion ($115.2 million USD) and in 2010 around KZT 24 billion ($162.7 million) was invested into science.”
Kazakhstan is spending 0.24 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on developing the science sector.
“Certainly, well-developed countries are allocating much more for science,” he said on the online forum. “For instance, this figure in Russia is 1 percent, developed countries have these numbers in no less than 2 percent mark and Japan spends more than 3 percent of the GDP for science.”
Kazakhstan plans to increase its own spending on science-related research to 1 percent, Zhakupov added.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is leading the push for Kazakh universities to focus more on applied sciences than pure science.
Source: Central Asia Newswire
