OREANDA-NEWS. July 29, 2013. Kazakh Prime Minister Serik Akhmetov has held a meeting of the Supreme Science-and-Technology Commission under the Government of Kazakhstan.

The meeting considered and approved the volumes of grant financing for research activities for 2014. Minister of Education and Science of Kazakhstan Bakhytzhan Zhumagulov delivered a keynote speech.

As noted by Akhmetov, the President pays special attention to science, including the creation of conditions for attraction of our scientists to innovative processes, the development of the economy.

"As a result of competitions for grant financing the national research councils selected 2115 projects from 6593 applications submitted. 2990 experts, including 1759 foreign experts were involved in the selection process," B.Zhumagulov said.

According to the minister, the dynamics of applications shows significantly increased activity of scientists, because now the applications can be filed both from research organizations and individual researchers.

"If in previous years there was almost complete dominance of Almaty and Astana, today about 40% of projects are from regions," Zhumagulov noted.

In addition, the Commission approved new science and technology programs for targeted funding for 2014-2016, as well as the priorities for the development of science.