ASTANA. February 24. KAZINFORM /Aigul Tulekbayeva/ According to data of the US and European experts, growth of prices for metals and metal products is not expected this year. Kazakh Minister of Industry and Trade Vladimir Shkolnik has announced at the Government’s session; Kazinform reports. According to the Minister, production of the Kazakh processing industry decreased by 12.4 percent in January 2009. The main reason of it is the situation in the mining and smelting sector (decline of production of iron ore - by 48.5 percent, ferrous metals - by 31.5 percent). As is known, about 40 percent of volume of the processing industry falls on the mining and smelting industry. According to the Minister, on February 14, 2009 283 enterprises partly or fully stopped their production. 141,148 people worked there. V.Shkolnik noted that at present the memorandums of jobs preservation with 3.280 enterprises of the country, where 760 thousand people work, were signed at the regional level. «Jointly with the Kazakh Ministry of Labor a monitoring of adopted obligations is carried out, and nowadays 97 percent of enterprises realize them», the Minister emphasized.