News

Last week I had a conversation with Constantinos Herodotou, the head of the Central Bank of Cyprus and a member of the Boarding Council of the European Central Bank (ECB). Mr. Herodotou is one of the narrow circle of people who make decisions on the ECB’s rates. In the course of the conversation, we touched on the topic of interest rates and he made a very important remark all decision-makers in central banks all over the world should keep in mind. Like antibiotics or antidepressants, an interest rate is a tool that has a long-term effect. Any such rate has...

Last week Turkey arrested Kazakhstan’s ship dubbed Zhibek Zholy (Silk Road) that had been leased to Russia. According to Kairbek Uskenbayev, the minister of industry and infrastructural development of Kazakhstan, the country is going to dissolve the leasing contract if the ship was used for illegal activities.

The official noted that Turkish authorities are trying to find out the origins of the ship’s cargo, who was a freighter, and who sent the cargo. He also said that Kazakhstan is going to ask Turkey to provide the country with details of the case.

«They should finish all the legal work. So...

The National Managing Holding Baiterek is going to finish the acquisition of Kazakhstan’s subsidiary of Russia’s biggest bank Sber, according to Kanat Sharlapayev, head of the holding.

As he noted, he would prefer not to comment on any current deal of the holding on acquisition or merging.

«I can confirm that the negotiations with Sber are continuing, but I can’t reveal any details. We are doing our best to complete the deal as soon as possible, though,» he said.

In May 2022, Madina Abylkasymova, head of the Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market of the Republic of...

Oliy Majlis, the lower house of Uzbekistan’s parliament, has supported the decision to keep the sovereign status of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

With one voice, deputies have supported the decision not to change articles 70,71,72,73,74 and 75 of the Uzbek Constitution (about Karakalpakstan).

On June 20, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev suggested organizing a referendum on amendments to the Constitution. It was supposed to discuss more than 200 amendments to 64 articles of the document. Part of these amendments suggested deleting the sovereign status of the Republic of Karakalpakstan which was approved by a referendum...

The Interagency Commission chaired by Vice Minister Eraly Tugzhanov has changed the COVID-19 rules for Kazakhstan’s regions that may have fallen into the moderate risk of COVID-19 yellow zone.

Among other participants of the meeting was Health Minister Azhar Giniyat, health minister, heads of state agencies, regional governors and representatives of the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs Atameken.

According to Giniyat, the country has reported a spike in new COVID-19 cases since June. For example, the health system reported 2.9 times more COVID cases this week than the previous week. It is worth noting that about 80% of those who have...

The Republic of Kazakhstan guarantees the protection of foreign investors’ interests and invites them to sign new investing contracts in the country, the Interfax Kazakhstan news agency reported citing Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov.

«The government invites foreign investors to sign investing contracts and take part in investment projects. We can guarantee that investors’ interests will be taken into account to the maximal reasonable extent. Given the uncertainty in the global economy, we are inviting all investors to put their money into Kazakhstan,» he said at Astana Finance Days 2022.

According to Smailov, the annual commodity circulation in Kazakhstan is about...

On June 27, the Development Bank of Kazakhstan (DBK) announced that it is inviting Kazakhstan’s exporting companies to take easy loans. In other words, the bank has money, a lot of money and it is ready to lend these financial resources with low interest.

In the aftermath of the January events, President Tokayev fired a salvo at the executives of the bank. In response, the DBK has implemented several measures to improve its business practices and increase transparency. For example, the bank now doesn’t participate in private-public partnership projects. Moreover, it’s opened its books on companies that have received easy...

In 2022, Kazakhstan’s citizens were more active than citizens of Germany and Afghanistan and bought 1,099 property units in Turkey, according to Turkish property registers.

Since January 2022, Kazakhstani citizens have shown a constantly growing interest in Turkish real estate. Thus, they bought 132 real estate units in January, 197 in February, 241 in March, and 311 in April. The data for May is slightly different: Kazakhstanis bought only 218 property units this month.

The trend is more impressive if we look at the yearly statistics. Over the period from January to May 2022, Kazakhstan’s citizens bought 76% more property...

The Senate, the upper house of Kazakhstan’s parliament has adopted a new law banning the advertising of any financial pyramids in the country.

The new law makes the penalty for the creation and advertising of Ponzi schemes much tougher. Now it’s not just about a financial penalty: those who violate the law may find themselves in jail.

«Financial pyramids are one of the biggest problems we must fight. We have to constantly improve our legislation in order to make it meet all the modern challenges. The new law deems the advertisement of any Ponzi scheme a crime and brings a...

KazMunayGaz (KMG), a national oil and gas company in Kazakhstan, is planning to go public by the end of this year, according to Almasadam Satkaliyev, head of Samruk-Kazyna, a sovereign wealth fund that owns the company. The revelation was made during Astana Finance Days in Nur-Sultan.

According to Satkaliyev, the fund and KMG have negotiated with the leading investment banks in Kazakhstan. The forthcoming IPO is going to be available for all citizens of Kazakhstan, although it will also be aimed at a wide range of retail and institutional investors.

«In order to attract as many people as we can...

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has ordered the government and AIFC to take necessary measures to facilitate the development of the cryptocurrency industry and digital assets. This statement was made at the meeting of the Management Council of the Astana International Financial Center Council, according to the press service of the president.

Kazakhstan must harness its potential in full, Tokayev noted.

«We are ranked #2 in terms of digital mining, but we have to do everything needed to abandon this solely raw-exports role. The government along with the financial agencies and AIFC should create better regulatory conditions for the comprehensive development of...

According to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the task of promoting the country’s national companies to the initial public offering (IPO) is priority number one. He made this statement during the meeting of the Managing Council of the Astana International Financial Center, the Akorda press service reported.

While President Tokayev talked about the IPO for national companies in Kazakhstan, he cited the example of the Samruk-Kazyna holding and its subsidiaries.

«Our fellow citizens shall have an opportunity to buy stock of our national companies and receive dividends from these investments. This is how the culture of investing is evolving,» the president highlighted.

Uzbekistan is going to upgrade its power supply system. This will require curbing the powers of the National Electric Grid of Uzbekistan, the state-owned company that is responsible for the entire system. Now, the country is planning to decrease the role of this company and let new suppliers improve the industry.

It is expected that JSC «National Electric Grid of Uzbekistan» will lose some of its responsibilities in purchasing electricity and managing the power grid. As a result, better conditions for private energy-producing companies would emerge, the government said. Once the new rules enter into force, big companies and regional...

According to trading data from the London Stock Exchange, Kaspi stock dropped by 6.81% ($47.9). At the same time, the trading results Kaspi demonstrates on KASE are slightly better as the company is traded at $53.48 per share or +1.2% compared to Thursday.

Baurzhan Tulepov, head of analytics in Jusan Invest believes that the company will rebound in the long-term, even though this is hard to achieve right now because of a big project the company has bought in Ukraine.

In summer 2021, Kaspi announced the acquisition of Portmone, a payment service in Ukraine. Some analytics have estimated the deal...

On June 24, the national pavilion of Kazakhstan opened on Alibaba’s Tmall Global Platform, according to the press service of the Ministry of Trade and Integration.

In 2021, QazTrade, a Kazakhstani entity responsible for entering the platform, signed a framework agreement with Alibaba.com on cooperation and promotion of Kazakhstani goods on global markets through the prominent Chinese trading platform.

Since 2019 about 200 Kazakhstani companies have successfully entered Alibaba.com with help of the government.

«The country’s pavilion includes 130 of our companies with a golden supplier status. All together they offer 7,500 items of goods,» the press service said.

Among...

The political concept of New Kazakhstan is going to be based on an effective party system, which is a kind of a mediator between the state and society. However, when the government promised to simplify registration rules for parties, many became curious about how many parties the country is going to have – 20, 30, or more than 200 like in Kyrgyzstan?

More likely we’ll see about 20 parties while only half of them would be registered because the standard political activities require a lot of money. In the past, only the state and oligarchic groups were able to run...

The European Union has expressed interest in cooperation with Kazakhstan in the area of rare metals and green hydrogen, according to Kazakhstan’s MFO.

The EU and Kazakhstan held their 19th meeting of the Cooperation Committee. The EU’s delegation was headed by Catherine Colonna, minister of Europe and foreign affairs in France. In turn, the Republic of Kazakhstan was represented by Mukhtar Tleuberdi, the foreign minister.

«In the course of negotiations, both sides have shown their interest in intensifying cooperation in the area of renewable energy. It includes mutual activity aimed at extraction and processing of rare metals and producing green...

According to people familiar with the matter, Russian public companies aren’t going to be listed on the new exchange or put money into it. However, SBP Exchange can provide the new project with technological support.

Earlier this week Frank Media reported that AIFC is going to establish a new stock exchange in order to facilitate Russia to get foreign investments. Also, such a new exchange would have been useful for retail investors as they can no longer trade with securities because of Western sanctions. According to the news agency, the idea had been discussed by the Bank of Russia, SPB...

Natalya Godunova, the head of Kazakhstan’s Counting Committee has suggested rolling back three-year budget planning due to its low efficacy.

While speaking to the parliament, Ms. Godunova said that the practice of three-year budget planning has never operated in full. The government puts a lot of resources into the preparation of each three-year budget plan but then it is forced to revise and adjust that plan each year.

«We do not even glimpse to the future and often we have to remove some items of cost out of the budget even though they had been approved before,» Godunova said.

As...

According to Magzum Mirzagaliyev, chairman of the board of Kazakhstan’s national oil and gas company KazMunayGaz, Chevron’s expertise in low carbon technologies and good practices it’s developed may help Kazakhstan to expand its efforts in reducing carbon emissions.

As a result, Chevron (via its subsidiary Chevron Munaygaz Inc.) and KazMunayGaz have signed a memorandum of cooperation. In the first stage, the two sides are going to study what they can jointly do to expand carbon capture, utilization and storage projects.

As Mirzagaliyev noted, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev pledged to make the country carbon neutral by 2060 when he spoke at the...

The only reason the first president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev theoretically might be prosecuted is treason, but there is no ground for this, according to Kanat Musin, the minister of justice in Kazakhstan.

Concerning the daughters of the first president Dariga and Aliya Nazarbayev and their husbands, there are no references in the Constitution to the ex-president’s family, Musin said. The law on the first president doesn’t protect them.

On June 10, the Nur-Sultan court extended the detention of Kairat Boranbayev and Kairat Satybaldy, both relatives of Nazarbayev. They are accused of embezzlement.

While responding to the question on Article...

As part of the demonopolization of power supply and communications, the government of Kazakhstan has suggested decreasing Kazakhtelecom’s share (the company is the national operator in the sphere of communications) in the sphere of mobile communications, according to the press service of the prime minister.

The suggestion was made during a meeting of the Commission on the Economy Demonopolization by a representative of the Agency for Protection and Development of Competition.

«In order to proceed with the demonopolization of the communication market, it’s been suggested to cut the market share of Kazakhtelecom. The prime minister has ordered to go behind...

Over the period from January through April more than four million square meters of property were built in Kazakhstan. The total amount of investments that were put into the industry surpassed $1.9 billion. The fastest-growing sectors of the industry became non-residential buildings and oil and gas pipelines.  

According to the Bureau of National Statistics of Kazakhstan, installation and construction work, which accounts for 88% of the construction industry ($1.7 billion), added 10% of the industry growth in terms of money. For comparison, major and minor repairs have shown unimpressive results: +0.2% and -4.4% respectively. Over the same period (January to...

Over the past decade, the number of saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan soared sixtyfold, thanks to large-scale conservation efforts by the government. At the moment, there are 1.3 million saiga specimens in the country. According to the Ministry of Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources, this number is too big as the animals can harm farms located all over the massive plains. That’s why the ministry decided to place saiga antelopes on the list of regulated animals. However, the agency hasn’t taken any decision about the hunting of saiga.

As the ministry announced, the animals that were considered endangered for years, are...