NUR-SULTAN / ex ASTANA (Xinhua) — Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev delivered the annual address to the nation on Tuesday, outlining the main goals of the country’s post-crisis development.

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev

Kazakh President delivers the annual address to the nation in a parliamentary session in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, on September 1^st, 2020.

Elaborating on the plan to reshuffle government bodies, Tokayev said in his annual address that an agency for strategic planning and reforms with direct subordination to the president will be founded. “The reforms developed by the agency should be specific, realistic and, most importantly, mandatory for all government agencies”, said the president.

He instructed to reduce the number of public servants by 10% by the end of 2020 and by 15% next year, with the saved funds to be used to increase the salaries of the remaining employees so as to enhance the competency of public service.

Tokayev noted that a new regulatory and legal framework for small and medium-sized enterprises will be created within the next year, urging all levels of the government to stop interfering in entrepreneurial activities.

On the economic front, Tokayev outlined principles of the new economic course, including expanding private entrepreneurship, further opening markets, increasing productivity growth, and developing a green economy as well as human capital.

Regarding the agriculture sector, Tokayev said the country is tasked with realizing self-sufficiency in socially significant food products, increasing incomes of rural residents, improving productivity by 2.5 times, and scaling up the export of agricultural products.

To improve the quality of online education, the president said a unified remote education platform should be established to make more children from low-income families get access to computers and the Internet.