Development Impact: Ramstore is the only major investment by a foreign grocery retailer in a sector that remains highly underdeveloped. Through its investment, Ramstore is making available low-cost, high quality foods and other consumer goods. At the same time the company is advancing its state-of-the-art inventory management, marketing, and sales techniques. As the only supermarket chain in Kazakhstan, the project continues to provide an important demonstration effect for retailers in Almaty and Kazakhstan generally. At completion of the third supermarket, the project will employ and have trained over 230 Kazakh nationals and will have provided doubled the creation of jobs in up and down stream activities. Indirectly, the project is assisting the development of the distribution and wholesale sectors as well as primary food processing. At present, Ramstore is sourcing approximately 85% of its product from the local market, working closely with domestic suppliers to ensure a consistent supply of high quality product.

IFC Role: IFC has a strong role to play in this project. First, the provision of long term financing, which is practically unavailable in Kazakhstan, will allow a project with foreign currency needs to proceed in a timely manner. At present, other options for Ramstore would be more costly and would take substantially more time as Ramstore is an existing IFC client. Second, IFC’s involvement will allow the corporation to continue to support a successful project in a difficult environment.

To view the environmental documents for this project, click here