The 15th Russia–Kazakhstan Interregional Cooperation Forum was held in Petropavlovsk (Republic of Kazakhstan) with heads of state in attendance on 8–9 November 2018. This year the event was devoted to the development of tourism. The South Urals delegation was headed by Chelyabinsk Region Governor Boris Dubrovsky.
The Russia–Kazakhstan Interregional Cooperation Forum has alternated in the border cities of each country annually since 2003. Last year it took place in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk and focused on the development of human capital. “As regards the development of inbound tourism, we place special emphasis on the Republic of Kazakhstan due to its geographic proximity, the existence of comfortable transport and logistics conditions, and the absence of customs, language, and socio-cultural barriers. Over the past four years, there has been an extensive calendar of events in the Chelyabinsk Region, with a special place allocated to the ‘Tugan Jer’ (‘Motherland’) Kazakh national creativity festival, which brought together a record number of participants and guests this year – over five thousand. As always, many kinds of opportunities for interaction with the Republic of Kazakhstan occur on the forum’s sidelines, particularly given that Chelyabinsk will host the SCO and BRICS summits in 2020. I believe that we have gained the right to become a platform for summits, including by successfully hosting the Russia–Kazakhstan Interregional Cooperation Forum last year and receiving well-deserved high praise from representatives of the two countries”, Boris Dubrovsky said.
The theme of the 2018 Forum was ‘New Approaches and Trends in the Development of Tourism in Russia and Kazakhstan’. The official part of the Forum featured a plenary session that was attended by the heads of state during which Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that over 50 Russian regional delegations visited Kazakhstan between January and October and that dozens of business missions, youth programmes, and events in science, education, and culture were organized: “I’d like to stress that regional exchanges account for about 70 percent of bilateral trade, which has already been discussed, and the Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Orenburg Regions are the most active. The annual trade volume of each of these three regions with their Kazakh partners is about one billion US dollars”.
The business part of the Forum centred around an exhibition at which different regions from the two countries presented their tourism potential, panel sessions concerning the introduction of new technologies in the tourism industry as well as the standardization and certification of places of accommodation, and discussions about the legislative framework for tourism of both countries. The exhibition was attended by representatives from 18 regions of Kazakhstan and 11 regions of Russia, seven tour operators from the two countries as well as employees of national companies and other organizations. In total, government agencies and companies from friendly countries signed more than 75 bilateral documents during the Forum. The sides agreed to jointly develop about 100 tourism routes in the border regions.
Details of the upcoming signing of an agreement between the Akimat of Kazakhstan’s Aktobe Region and the Government of the Chelyabinsk Region on trade, economic, scientific, technical, social, cultural, and humanitarian cooperation were discussed on the sidelines of the forum.
Representatives from the Tourism Development Centre of the Chelyabinsk Region held meetings with their colleagues from other regions of Russia and the Republic of Kazakhstan during the Forum and reached a number of agreements, in particular with the Kazakh Ministry of Culture and Sports on the a South Urals delegation’s participation in the KITF international exhibition in Almaty in April 2019.
