News

The Bank of Russia is going to put stricter control on mortgage loans with an initial installment of about 20% of the total cost of housing, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

In the first quarter this year, the number of mortgage loans with small initial installments has reached 45% on the new homes market in Russia. In comparison to the second quarter of last year, this figure was just 24%. On the secondary housing market, the rise was from 30% to 33%. In reaction to these changes, the regulator has decided to raise risk coefficients by 100 percentage...

LinkedIn, a popular social network for professionals, is out of service in Kazakhstan.

According to Kazakhstani officials, access to LinkedIn has been stopped because the service had touted online casinos and fake accounts, which is illegal in the country. The Ministry of Communications and Information had informed LinkedIn about violations but because there was no reaction from the service, its work in Kazakhstan has been stopped. 

However, the authorities promise to restore access to the service once all violations are fixed.

LinkedIn has also been blocked in Russia since 2016 due to allegedly violating rules designed for the proper storage...

Chairman of the Belarus Constitutional Court Petr Miklashevitch has aimed to revise age limits upwards, according to the BELTA news agency.

According to the current requirements, any Belarus citizen above 35 can be elected as president if he hasn’t left the country over the last ten years. Now, this rule might be changed. 

«We are suggesting to keep the presidential form of the government but to change some requirements to the presidency candidates legislated in the country’s Constitution. Presidency candidate should be at least 40 years old. Moreover, the resident qualification should be changed from 10 to 20 years...

Freedom Finance joint-stock company’s net earnings have risen 52% or about $4 million in the second quarter this year if compared to the same period last year, the company reported.

As Freedom Finance noted, the growth of net income was driven by the growth of net earnings from the changed price of financial assets evaluated by a fair price. All the fair price changes are reflected in the company’s income or loss reports (if the sum is more than $5.8 million) or decreasing net income from traded financial assets (for $2.3 million or 45%).

As of June 30, 2021, the...

Two employees of the Almaty International Airport have been detained by law enforcement officials as they were being accused of illegal sale of fake PCR test certificates.

A 29-year old woman and a 28-year man, both unidentified, were arrested by Almaty criminal police officials in conjunction with Kazakhstan’s Committee on National Security. 

According to the police, both suspects were involved in trading with fake negative PCR test results for those headed to travel abroad. All the certificates had been produced on their own with the help of a mobile app. They changed the personal information of applicants and were able...

Russian tech giant Yandex announced its innovative service of machine translation of video clips from one language to another. With help of the service, users can watch videos just in a browser with voiceover translation, according to RBK news agency. 

The new service combines the current service Yandex.Translate, biometry and speech recognition, and speech synthesizer. It is supposed that the service will be able to operate with various languages. However, now the prototype can work with video clips only in English.

The service can distinguish the sex of a human being on a video and then pick up the right...

In the first half of the current year, the civil aviation of Kazakhstan performed very well, thanks to the higher traffic of passengers and cargo.

According to data published by Kazakhstan’s National Bureau of Statistics, over the period from January to June 2021, the country’s airlines were able to earn more than $354,315,156, which is 52% higher compared to the same period last year. The vast part of these revenues have been provided by passengers, who pay for tickets (94%), while the rest is cargo transportation (6%). For example, this year airlines were able to sell tickets to 4.2 million...

According to the latest data, the death toll of coronavirus in Russian has reached 791 cases a day, which is higher than the day before (786 deaths). This is the highest rate since the beginning of the pandemic, TASS news agency reported.

Over the pandemic, the total death toll in the country is 146,069 people. As the Russian crisis center noted, the mortality rate is still the same – 2.48%. 

However, the total number of COVID-19 cases has reached 5,882,295 with a daily increase in cases of 0.43% on a relative basis. About 89.7% of these infected patients have successfully...

The U.S. authorities have imposed a ban on dog entry. Now, the list of countries with rabies risk consists of 113 states, including Kazakhstan, according to the RIA Novosti news agency. 

This decision has been made due to the high level of risk of dog rabies. There is no clear information on how long the ban can last.

The list of 113 countries under the ban for dog import includes such countries as Kazakhstan, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Mainland China, Ukraine, Moldova as well as countries from Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and Asia. As U.S. health officials informed, the number...

In Tbilisi, people took to the streets near the parliament demanding the government to quit, according to RBK.

People have started to protest when it became known that Alexander Lashkarava, journalist and operator of the TV channel Pirvely, was beaten and died. On July 5 he participated in an LGBTQ march where participants were attacked by their opponents. According to the officials, there were about 50 attacks on media representatives including cameramen, journalists, and photographers. 

Many of those who took to the streets in Tbilisi blame Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili for failure to use his authority to protect media workers...

President Kassym Jomart Tokayev has released Saparkhan Omarov, the minister of agriculture from office.

On July 10 during a meeting with Kazakhstan’s government, President Tokayev said he believes the minister of agriculture should quit because it is the right decision due to the situation with the loss of cattle and forage shortage in the Mangystau and Kyzylorda regions.

«The Ministry has failed to take rapid and bold decisions, even though this is exactly what it is supposed to do. Therefore, I think that Saparkhan Omarov should quit the office,» said the president. 

According to Prime Minister Askar Mamin...

According to law enforcement officials of Nur-Sultan, a local chemical specialist had run a drug-producing laboratory where he made mephedrone and amphetamine.

The scientist, a 27-year old resident of Nur-Sultan, used to rent an apartment, which he managed to turn into a sophisticated chemical lab and producing center.

When police forced an entry to the apartment, they found a notebook with chemical formulas of synthetic drugs, electronic weight scales, some chemical components, bottles, small polyethylene bags, 10 grams of ready-to-use drugs and a computer for online trading.  

The criminal used to sell drugs through an online shop; when he...

According to a Kazakhstani company, the Brazilian producer has broken its contract and didn’t provide proper guarantee services. The airline estimates its cost of «unsafe» flights at $11.9 million plus court expenditures.

The claim against Brazilian Embraer was filed in New York on July 2 by Latham & Watkins LLP on behalf of Air Astana, which has kept five E190-300 in its fleet. Interestingly, they are almost new and remained in service for less than a year. All of them are well-known to Kazakhstani passengers thanks to the hand-made image of a snow leopard on the nose of the aircraft.

Kazakhstan’s Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market has announced it uncovered a new financial pyramid in the country.

It is a routine practice for the regulator to monitor social networks as the agency tries to have a finger on the pulse of the financial life in the country. During such an examination, the agency has detected a fraud activity of Finiko, which is still actively advertising itself, particularly on Instagram by promising people a high level of return. According to the agency, this activity has all the signs of a Ponzi scheme, not a real investment business.

DNA Payments Group, a payment service run by its founders Arif Babayev and Nurlan Zhagiparov from Kazakhstan, has reached a deal with Alchemy Partners. This private investment company from the U.K. wants to pour £100 million into the business of DNA.

DNA provides payment services for more than 45,000 merchants, including big online and offline retailers and small- and medium-sized businesses. Every month, DNA clients have been making about 20 million transactions for more than £600 million.

According to DNA Payments Group founders, the company has managed to expand its business by adding to its system a list of new...

The U.S. government wants to deploy its troops in Central Asia after withdrawal from Afghanistan and has been negotiating with the region’s countries, including Kazakhstan, according to Interfax news agency citing Zalmay Khalilzad, the Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation at the U.S. State Department.

As Khalilzad has noted, the U.S. authorities want the Central Asian states to cooperate with Washington in the fight against terrorism and the economic development of Afghanistan.

«No official decision has been made yet but I’d like to say that the discussions, negotiations are continuing. The U.S. is full of determination to build potential in the...

The founder of the Tesla company Elon Musk said hello to Kazakhstan during a presentation of Model S Plaid at the plant in Fremont. This video has been published in the Telegram channel of Beybit Alibekov, a prominent blogger from Kazakhstan.

Mask was asked about his projections for Supercharger charging stations in Kazakhstan. He replied that charging stations might appear in the country by the end of this year or next year. Tesla Supercharger is a technology of fast charging developed by Tesla for its electric cars. The businessman was also asked about a plant in Kazakhstan. According to Musk...

Kazakhstanis Alexander Bublik and Andrey Golubev have made it to the final of the 2021 French Open Men’s Doubles.

In the semi-final game with the Spanish tennis team of Pablo Andujar / Pedro Martinez Portero, the Kazakhstani players lost their first set with a score of 1:6. However, they pulled themselves together and won the next two sets with a score of 6:4 each.

In the final game, Bublik and Golubev will play with a duet of Herbert / Mahun from France, who outplayed tennis players from Columbia Cabal / Farah on...

Competition in digital markets raises a lot of issues that regulators from all over the world must address. Kazakhstan along with other the Eurasian Economic Union member states also has to cope with the issue.  

In March 2021, Yandex, a well-known Russian IT company, filed an application to Kazakhstan’s Agency for Protection and Development of Competition (APDC) accusing Google of a monopoly on the market. According to Yandex, the American giant aggressively promotes its services on Android devices while blocking services from other companies.

As Marat Omarov, deputy head of APDC told the Kursiv edition, this case is still under...

The world hockey championship in Riga is now over. Even though Kazakhstan didn’t make it, its national team has caused a sensation during the tournament. 

Under Yuriy Mikhaylis‘s supervision, the Kazakhstani team has shown amazing playing skills in Latvia’s 2021 Ice Hockey World Championship. Even though the Kazakhstani team didn’t make it to the semifinal match, it has shown excellent game within its group. The senior coach of the team Yuriy Mikhaylis gave an interview to the Kursiv edition and explained what happened in Latvia.

– First of all, congratulations! Your team has shown high results. This is probably the...

City Transportation Systems company tries to find an underwriter to raise $1.08 billion through bonds issuing. However, on May 26, 2021, the tender committee declared that the tender is canceled. The reason is that one of the two participants, SkyBridge Invest, left the race because it failed to meet all the requirements. Since there was only one participant, the tender committee couldn’t proceed further with the tender procedures. A suitable time for the second attempt at the tender has not yet been announced.

Prevented from Bidding

City Transportation Systems LLP (former Astana LRT LLP) is owned by the city of...

Boxing champion in three weight categories Firuza Sharipova from Kazakhstan is a leader in an updated rating of female boxers by WBA, according to the sportswoman’s official representative.

The queen among women boxers in the lightweight category is still Katie Taylor from Ireland. However, as Sharipova has reached the first position in the rating, she has become a candidate for a fight with Taylor within WBA activities.

If Sharipova wins in a fight with Taylor she would collect all four champion belts in the lightweight division. This would be a new record for Kazakhstan. For example, Gennadiy Golovkin or GGG...

Businesses have to acquire special equipment to make marking on their packaging. Even though entrepreneurs are forced to spend some money, the final value of their products won’t necessarily be higher. Usually, equipment accounts for a rate from 0.06 to 0.15% of a product’s price, according to Olzhas Bekturov, head of the Center of Digital Economy Development.

There are lots of factors that can affect retail prices. Over the last five years, prices of dairy products with no marking have increased by a rate of 6% to 13%. 

«The fact that retail prices tend to rise proves that marking...

Kazakhstan has risen by nine points and taken the 86th position in the international rating on mobile internet speed. In terms of wideband internet speed, Kazakhstan is still on the 67th position, according to Speedtest global index.

The rating is based on connection speed, network delay and packet loss, which are measured by certain servers. In Kazakhstan, such servers have been working in 17 towns since October 2020 and are run by Kazakhtelecom.

According to the company, the increased speed of mobile internet has occurred because mobile operators changed the way they used to stay connected (MTS...