ASTANA – Director and Partner of Slovenian engineering company RIKO Janez Škrabec has been coming to this part of the world for nearly four decades. His first visit to the Soviet Union was in 1988, when Kazakhstan belonged to a completely different political and economic reality.
Today, he is returning to Astana, which is increasingly positioning itself as a regional center of transport, energy, investment and technological cooperation. Director and Partner of Slovenian engineering company RIKO Janez Škrabec. Photo credit: The Astana Times There is a certain value in seeing a country not at one particular moment, but across decades.
Škrabec’s perspective is therefore more than that of a businessman assessing a market. He has watched the region change, institutions evolve, and Eurasia’s geography take on new economic meaning. His visit to Kazakhstan comes as Kazakhstan-Slovenia ties build on the momentum of Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar’s visit in spring 2025, which placed greater emphasis on practical economic cooperation in trade, investment, energy, transport and technology.
Škrabec joined the Slovenian business delegation during that visit and attended the business forum in Astana with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. For RIKO, the visit became a catalyst: the company has since opened a representative office in Astana and is developing projects in energy, water, transport and industrial infrastructure.
The next challenge, in Škrabec’s view, is to turn political goodwill into lasting business partnerships. In an interview with The Astana Times, Škrabec discussed where business can move faster than politics, why energy and infrastructure may become the foundation of a deeper Kazakhstan-Slovenia partnership, and why lasting economic ties ultimately depend not only on capital and technology but also on trust.
Director and Partner of Slovenian engineering company RIKO Janez Škrabec spoke to The Astana Times correspondent Aida Haidar. Photo credit: The Astana Times From political momentum to practical cooperation “High-level political visits matter because they open doors, build trust and create the conditions for companies to move toward concrete projects,” Škrabec said.
For him, however, the real test of political goodwill comes after the official meetings end. “Business can move faster than politics when there is a clear project, financing, technology and a reliable local partner. At that point, political goodwill can quickly become economic reality,” he said.
The next stage of Kazakhstan-Slovenia cooperation, he believes, should therefore focus less on declarations and more on projects in which the two sides can combine their respective strengths. That view comes from a much longer personal history with the region. “I first came to the then Soviet Union as a young entrepreneur in 1988, and for decades RIKO was active in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine,” he said.