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According to the press service of the Karaganda region, the election of a mayor of the town of Abai is set for April 10.

There are four candidates for the position, including Medeu Akhmetov, the current mayor of Abai, who has stayed in office since May 15, 2018, Akniet Abzhatov and Amangeldy Nurmukhanov, both workers in the local administration and Gulnara Kosaeva, a coach in a local sports club. The first and the last candidates are nominees of the Amanat and NPK (Kazakhstan Peoples Party) political parties respectively, while the other two are independent candidates.

Abai is a town of...

The agreement between the governments of Kazakhstan and the Republic of Korea regarding the mutual abolition of visas is going to resume for Kazakhstani people starting from April 1, according to the press service of the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This visa-free regime had been suspended by the Korean government because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now citizens of Kazakhstan will be able to enter the Republic of Korea and stay there visa-free for 30 days. However, for those who are going to work, study or live in South Korea, visas are still required.

Foreigners, who enter Korea should register...

According to Bagdat Musin, minister of digital development, innovations and aerospace industry of Kazakhstan, residents in 200 settlements have no access to the internet even though mobile operators claimed that they have. This statement was made during a meeting of the counting committee which has audited the activities of the ministry.

As he noted, the quality and presence of internet access is an urgent problem.

«In 2019 we did 50 examinations of the quality of the communications. Last year we did 560 such examinations. In 2019 mobile operators paid just $32,200 in fines; in 2020 the total number of penalties...

The Royal Dutch airline KLM may return to Kazakhstan. At least, this question became a significant part of talks between Askar Zhumagaliev, Kazakhstan’s ambassador to the Netherlands and KLM top officials: Frank Prilevitz, vice president for international affairs and corporate law and Seth van Straten, KLM network director.

As Askar Zhumagaliyev noted, there are no direct flights to Kazakhstan from the Netherlands. As a result, Dutch entrepreneurs have to make transfers while traveling to Kazakhstan, and of course, resuming direct air travel can boost cooperation between the two countries.

“There is a great opportunity for KLM to restore direct flights...

Once the new railway from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan is done, the transit of cargo toward the south will be much faster, said Kairbek Uskenbayev, minister of industry and infrastructural development of Kazakhstan.

The new railway is going to connect Darbaza and Maktaaral. The railway station Darbaza, Kazakhstan is located between Arys and Saryagash (both of which are in the Turkestan region of Kazakhstan). Kazakhstan exporters are used to sending their goods such as wheat and flour via Saryagash, the railway station right on the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and near the Uzbek capital city of Tashkent. However, exporters have...

Kazakhstan is a member state of the Eurasian Economic Union where the balance of migration is most negative, as tens of thousands of people leave the county forever.

According to the Eurasian Economic Commission’s data, all EEU member states except Russia reported a negative migration balance last year. Kyrgyzstan has shown the lowest migration rate (-769 people).

Kazakhstan demonstrates the biggest rate of negative migration balance. About 32,200 people left the country last year, while only 10,900 people came to Kazakhstan to live here. In 2021 the number of people leaving Kazakhstan increased by 20% compared to 2020.

However, the...

Gulmira Satybaldy, wife of once-powerful mogul Kairat Satybaldy, is accused of embezzlement of public funds of particularly large sums of money, according to the Anti-Corruption Agency of Kazakhstan.

The Shymkent department of the Anti-Corruption Agency is conducting a pre-trial investigation into the activities of several official representatives of the Shymkent Department of Public Transportation and Roads and a company called Ariya-Zhana Astana. Gulmira Satybaldy is one of them.

«The investigation focuses on the embezzlement of $1.6 million of public funds in 2021. This money was paid for construction services, which were never done in practice,» the agency said in an...

On March 29, Rustam Akhmetov, the first deputy chairman of the Agency for Protection and Development of Competition stated that the government won’t be able to support domestic prices for gas after 2025. This assessment is based on the rate of annual growth of gas consumption in Kazakhstan and the shrinking volumes of fuel that have been exported by the country abroad.

In 2021, Kazakhstan exported 7 billion cubic meters of gas out of the 25 billion cubic meters of gas the country produced in total. For years the government of Kazakhstan has subsidized domestic gas prices at the expense...

Euro-5 road tractors will be free from recycling fees. Moreover, a fee for the first registration will also be lifted, according to Kairbek Uskenbayev, Kazakhstan’s minister of industry and infrastructural development.

As the official said, the move is aimed at improving the competitiveness of local carriers. The government wants the domestic lorry fleet to increase from 7,615 trucks to 15,000 trucks by 2025.

«Over the period from 2023 to 2028 no fee for first registration will be required for Euro-5 trucks. Also, this kind of vehicle from 12 to 50 tons in weight will be free from a recycling fee...

As herd immunity in Kazakhstan has become a reality, the government decided to lift any limitations for vaccination and revaccination with Pfizer’s vaccine for all categories of citizens in the country.

According to Eraly Tugzhanov, deputy prime minister of Kazakhstan, the decision regarding overall vaccination is a result of three prior stages. In the first stage, the vaccination with Pfizer covered pregnant women, teenagers and those who headed abroad. In the second stage, the country’s health system started to vaccinate elderly people over age 60 and then over 50.

«Today more than 10 million people in Kazakhstan are fully vaccinated...

According to his official website, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has appointed Erulan Zhamaubayev to be the new deputy head of the cabinet.

«To appoint Erulan Zhamaubayev deputy prime minister – minister of finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan and to discharge him from the position of minister of finance,» the official edict by the president said.

Erulan Zhamaubayev was born in 1974. He graduated from the Kazakh State Academy of Management, faculty of finance and Kazakh Economy University named after Ryskulov, MBA.

Over his career, Zhamaubayev worked in the National Bank of Kazakhstan, the House Construction Savings bank of Kazakhstan and...

As Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Justice reported, the country has won a case in an arbitration court against Big Sky Energy Corporation. The decision of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an international arbitration institution entered into force on March 25, when the deadline for appeal had expired.

Big Sky had tried to make the Republic of Kazakhstan pay $460 million of compensation for contracts with third parties not linked to the government.

«Big Sky had tried to claim restitution from the state of Kazakhstan based on alleged violations of the US-Kazakhstan investment agreement,» said the ministry.

The...

The Council of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) has decided to lift its customs tariff for electric cars imported in the Eurasian Economic Union member-states in a limited quantity, Kolesa.kz reported.

Among countries that are going to introduce zero tariffs for importing electric cars are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Currently, all these countries except Kazakhstan have in practice a 15% tariff.

The new rule also prohibits owning, using or controlling these electric vehicles by people who have either Russian citizenship or residence permit by Russia.

«We expect that these new tariff benefits along with other measures aimed at stimulating...

While responding to a question about what he is thinking of the legal side of the arrest of Kairat Satybaldy, nephew of the first president Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kanat Musin, the country’s minister of justice pointed out that the constitutional law on the first president covers members of his immediate family, not nephews, Sputnik Kazakhstan reported.

He denied the possibility of legal prosecution of Nursultan Nazarbayev and his daughter Dariga Nazarbayeva.

«We cannot detain or arrest these individuals. This is a law. However, there are no problems with asking them questions and receiving answers,» said Kanat Music.

He believes that law...

Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have mutually recognized COVID-19 vaccination certificates, the Kun.uz website reported citing Uzbekistan Airways.

«While crossing the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan citizens of both countries are no longer required to provide a negative PCR test result if they have vaccination certificates,» the company said. All those certificates must have QR codes.

On March 15, 2022, a special republican commission on fighting against COVID-19 in Uzbekistan decided to allow foreigners to visit the country with only a vaccination certificate; a PCR test is no longer required.

However, if a foreigner has no vaccination certificate he or she must...

President’s Biden administration is trying to find out what the U.S. can do to make sanctions more painful for Russia. According to the Washington Post, a new tranche of sanctions may be targeted at third countries, which still support close economic ties with Russia. The final decision hasn’t been made though, the newspaper reported.

This strategy which is also known as «secondary sanctions» is usually aimed at increasing pain from economic sanctions. The United States has applied them in only a few cases. If these secondary sanctions are adopted, several countries in Asia, including Kazakhstan, which have abstained from cutting...

The biggest Russian airline Aeroflot has launched regular flights from Sochi to Armenia, Egypt, Israel, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Uzbekistan, according to the Interfax-Kazakhstan newswire.

As the company said, these routes have been launched to serve transit passengers who travel from the main airline’s airports including Moscow (Sheremetyevo), Saint Petersburg and Krasnoyarsk via the international airport of Sochi.

From Sochi passengers will be able to travel by another airline called «Russia,» which is going to conduct all further flights for Aeroflot.

At the beginning of March Aeroflot canceled all international flights except direct flights to Minsk, Belarus. This decision followed a...

The town of Ust-Kamenogorsk is the center of the nonferrous-metals industry in Kazakhstan. It is located at the mouth of Irtysh and Ulba Rivers. This story by The Real Kazakhstan, a project by the Kursiv edition and Chevron, is going to talk about the town of Ust-Kamenogorsk, its way of life and problems.

Over the period from 2021 to 2023, the town is going to earn $137.7 million while its estimated costs during this period won’t exceed $114.1 million. According to the local administration, Ust-Kamenogorsk ranked first in Kazakhstan in terms of industrial output, third in terms of agriculture, construction...

The town of Ayagoz was established more than 90 years ago. The current name of the town is the same as the nearby river. However, the settlement that was established nearby in the tsarist imperial period was called Sergiopol. During the Soviet times, the town was called Ayaguz. In 1994 it was renamed Ayagoz, which is the correct spelling of the Kazakh name of the river.

The modern town was established in 1931 near the village of Mamyrsu as the Soviet authorities initiated the massive construction of the Turkestan-Siberia Railway. Among many other buildings in the town, there were telegraph...

Kazakhstan and its partners have done an incredible job creating TITR. Amid the crisis in Ukraine, these efforts may pay back even though the maximal volume of transit is quite small now and doesn’t exceed 200,000 containers a year.

In overdrive

The crisis in Ukraine has turned into a crisis in transport and logistics for all of Eastern Europe. Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states used to rely on export and import routes via Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Now the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR) is the only alternative transport corridor to the West.

During the past couple...

In the fourth national address, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has announced a plan of moderate political reforms. He also mentioned new measures aimed at stabilizing the national economy and ordered the creation of new administrative divisions.

No longer a superpresidency

The part of the address devoted to political reforms was the most intense. Right after the January events, President Tokayev promised to present a complex of new political reforms that may facilitate political competition in the country.

«“We need specific actions to change the political model of Kazakhstan. This is necessary for the further development of the country. We...

Most recently, Kazakhstan’s banks reported a growing number of requests from Russian financial entities, companies and individuals who want to set up a bank account in Kazakhstan. This information has been confirmed by several sources familiar with the issue.

About ten Russian banks have been sanctioned by western countries. VTB, Bank Otkritie, Sovkombank, Promsvyazbank and Novikombank, all of which were included in the SDN list, have faced the most severe sanctions. Correspondent accounts of the Russian Sber have also been sanctioned by American and British authorities. To avoid new limitations in work Russian entrepreneurs and bankers are now looking at...

As President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said at the meeting with both chambers of the national parliament, Kazakhstan is going to embrace a new political system with strong parliament instead of the superpresidency the country relies on currently.

«We need specific actions to change the political model of Kazakhstan. This is necessary for the further development of Kazakhstan. We have to make a transition from the superpresidency to a presidential form of government with a strong parliament. This system will provide us with a good balance between public institutions and facilitate sustainable development of the country,» Tokayev said.

The president also stated...

While attending a joint session of the parliament President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev suggested simplifying the process of political party registration.

«We have to decrease the registration qualification for parties fourfold from 20,000 to 5,000. The threshold of a minimal quantity of party supporters in regions must be decreased from 600 t0 200 people. And only 700 individuals instead of 1,000 will be needed to establish a political party,» said the president.

Tokayev also noted that the government is going to increase the time frame for founding congresses and creating representative offices in regions. The president believes that these measures will promote...