Interview: Belt and Road brings enormous opportunities for Kyrgyzstan, says official

BISHKEK, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has opened up enormous development opportunities for Kyrgyzatan, a Kyrgyz official has said.

Kyrgyzstan-China relations have been developing intensively in recent decades and today they are characterized as strategic, said Zhalyn Zheenaliev, deputy director of the National Investment Agency under the President of the Kyrgyz Republic, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

"Over the past 10 years, the main investment partner of Kyrgyzstan has been China, that is, in general, 33 percent of the attracted investments came from China," Zheenaliev said.

Taking the opportunities brought by the BRI, major projects such as the Datka-Kemin power transmission line, a school in Bishkek and a hospital have been built, said the official.

"Moreover, within the framework of the initiative, the development of a project for the construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway will begin," said Zheenaliev. "This is a strategically important moment in the history of Kyrgyzstan."

"The railway branch in the country is not developed, and the construction of this railway will allow Kyrgyzstan to get out of the railway dead end and reach a new level of logistics and transportation," he said.

The official also voiced confidence that China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region could become one of the main locomotives in promoting Kyrgyz-Chinese initiatives.

The most promising areas in cooperation between Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang include subsoil use, agriculture and energy, said Zheenaliev, adding that agreements on the development of coal deposits were concluded between entrepreneurs and investors in Xinjiang and the state-owned enterprise Kyrgyzkomur of Kyrgyzstan.

"We expect that our exports of goods will increase significantly and Xinjiang becomes one of the main locomotives in promoting joint strategic ideas and initiatives in this regard," Zheenaliev said.