President appoints ex-head of Baiterek as new minister of industry and construction

The new Ministry of Industry has been created by the president’s decision / Photo: Shutterstock and baiterek.gov.kz

Kanat Sharlapayev, ex-chairman of the national holding Baiterek, has been appointed as the new minister of industry and construction.

Members of the lower house of the parliament have approved the candidacy of Kanat Sharlapayev as the new minister of industry and construction. The decision was made during a meeting of the Committee on Economic Reform and Regional Development.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has already signed an edict on the appointment.

«To appoint Kanat Sharlapayev as the minister of industry and construction of the Republic of Kazakhstan,» the edict says.

The context. On September 1, President Tokayev signed an edict on the creation of five new ministries, including the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Industry in place of the former Ministry of Industry.

The Ministry of Information has become the Ministry of Culture and Information, while the Ministry of Culture and Sports has been transformed into the Ministry of Tourism and Sports. The new Ministry of Water Resources has taken part of the responsibilities of the Ministry of Ecology.

What do we know about Sharlapayev? The new minister was born in 1981 in the Saratov region of Russia. He graduated from the Saratov Social Economic University and Cranfield School of Management in the U.K.

His professional career started in 2003 when he joined the banking industry. Over the years, he worked in different regional divisions of the American Citibank. On September 28, 2022, Sharlapayev was elected a member of the Board of Directors of the Baiterek holding.

The holding, which was established in 2013, supervises several national companies including the Development Bank of Kazakhstan, KazakhExport, Qazaqstan Investment Corporation, the Damu Entrepreneurship Development Fund, Otbasy Bank, a national operator of mortgage programs, Kazakhstan Housing Company, Agrarian Credit Corporation and Bereke Bank, which was bought from the Russian Sber in September last year. Currently, it has been going through the process of lifting U.S. sanctions.

In 2022, Baiterek reported $826 million in revenue, $26.4 billion in assets and $4.3 billion in fixed capital.

On September 1, some media outlets reported that the holding decreased payments to the top management by 4.9% to $603,776.