News

Kazakhstan’s Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market (ARDFM) is excluding the Principality of Liechtenstein and the U.S. State of Delaware from its list of offshore zones.

The agency has created a list of offshore zones to facilitate banking and insurance activities, operations of professional stock market participants and other types of activities related to stock markets, investment funds and microfinance organizations.

According to a draft of the ARDFM resolution published for public consideration, the change is following the new U.S. Corporate Transparency Act that enters into force starting January 1, 2024. Under this legislation, all companies incorporated...

The microfinance organization Solva has disclosed the names of the beneficiaries of Neo Crystal Holdings Ltd, a company registered in the UAE that has recently bought a stake in the microfinance company. This is the Sawiris family from Egypt and partners of the ZCP fund.

The Sawiris family’s holding Orascom actively invests in various countries and industries. The founder of Orascom Group Onsi Sawiris established the entity as a developing company but later expanded its scope of interests and focused on long-term investments. The Sawiris family also owns HOF Capital, the fund whose interests lay in the sphere of fintech...

Kazakhstan’s Agency for Protection and Development of Competition has initiated an investigation against mobile operators accused of price fixing, as their prices surged within the range of 7.7% to 57.3%.

What happened? Specialists from the antimonopoly agency have analyzed tariff plans of mobile operators and their price dynamics, stating that prices for telecommunication services increased within the range of 7.7% to 57.3% this year.

«Over the period from May to July, mobile operators gradually increased the cost of services in more than 30 tariff plans with monthly fees,» the agency said in a statement.

Who...

Russia decided to open a general consulate in Aktau and has already obtained consent from the government of Kazakhstan, according to the Komsomoslkaya Pravda newspaper, citing Yevgeny Ivanov, deputy foreign minister of Russia. This is going to be the fourth Russian general consulate in Kazakhstan.

Why is Russia opening a new consulate? According to Ivanov, Russia is going to «significantly expand» its diplomatic presence abroad soon.

«All necessary decisions are made and negotiated with foreign governments. We are going to open embassies in Burkina Faso and Equatorial Guinea, general consulates in Kapane (Armenia), Aktau (Kazakhstan), Samarkand...

According to Sultan Kamaletdinov, deputy defense minister, Kazakhstan may send its military to the Golan Heights as part of a U.N. international mission. If the country’s parliament approves the move, the military will be sent in March 2024, the official said at a briefing for the media.

What happened? As Kamaletdinov noted, more than 1,500 military personnel from different countries are currently stationed at the Golan Heights. In March 2024, Kazakhstan can send 139 members of its military to the area.

«We started our preparations last spring. Over the period from April to October, we worked...

Freedom Finance SPC Ltd, a subsidiary of Freedom Holding Corp., has placed five-year bonds with a yield of 11.5% to 12% per annum and raised $200 million. This was the first stage of a $1 billion issuance program, the holding said in a statement.

According to Timur Turlov, CEO and majority shareholder in Freedom Holding Corp., the bond offering has been the biggest public deal involving retail investors for the past several years on the AIX. He also emphasized that the offering was unique for the local market because of its size and 100% involvement of individuals.

Since early December 2023, various media outlets in Kazakhstan have been reporting multiple cases of organized cyber-attacks on their websites and accounts on social media. Among those who have suffered from the attacks are Kursiv.Media, ProTenge, Inbusiness.kz, KazTAG, Nege.kz, Lsm.kz and Shishkin_like, a channel on Telegram.

According to representatives of the media, cyber-attacks are a very dangerous abuse of the right to have access to information. This situation must be viewed in the socio-political context, journalists said. They held a roundtable discussion in Almaty where they discussed how to protect the media from cyber-attacks and improve the legal security of...

The Akorda (the official residence of the president of Kazakhstan) has denied the information published by The Wall Street Journal about behind-the-scenes negotiations between Russia and Kazakhstan. The edition wrote that President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev refused to send Kazakhstan’s military to Russia in June 2023, when Eugene Prigozhin, the late head of the Wagner mercenary group, organized a mutiny in Russia.

The press service of Kazakhstan’s president has commented on the article by The Wall Street Journal that claims that Nikolay Patrushev, secretary of the Security Council in Russia, asked President Tokayev to send troops to Russia in order to crack...

According to Timur Zhantikin, director general of the Kazakhstan Nuclear Power Plants company, the construction of the first NPP in the country could cost about $10 to $15 billion.

How much money can Kazakhstan allocate for the construction of an NPP?

«The cost of the first plant is around $10 to $15 billion. Currently, we are working on sources of funding. Mainly, they are international financial institutions. This project is considered commercial with no support from the government. Therefore, we have some nuances here,» Zhantikin said.

What is Zhantikin’s company responsible for?

According to the...

The government of Cyprus has decided to establish an embassy in Kazakhstan because it acknowledges the importance of the region of Central Asia, the TASS news agency reported, citing Konstantinos Letymbiotis, the official representative of the government of Cyprus.

Why has Cyprus decided to open its embassy in Kazakhstan? According to Letymbiotis, the government of Cyprus views Central Asia as a very important part of its foreign policy.

«Taking into consideration our desire to have a voice in and play a role in all those events in the region that directly or indirectly affect our interests...

According to Kazakhstan’s Minister of Transport Marat Karabayev, the government is planning to pass control over the airports of Aktobe, Turkestan and Kyzylorda to large foreign managing companies with expertise in this field.

As the minister noted, the country’s government is trying to garner the attention of private investors with the necessary knowledge and skills to establish multi-modal centers in the country’s airports. Under this concept, airport runways, fuel stations as well as passenger and cargo terminals are being repaired. For instance, in the airport of Karaganda, an investor wants to upgrade a runway strip and purchase the necessary equipment...

According to the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), the amount of regional accumulated direct investments (FDI) in Central Asia reached $1.1 billion in the first half of 2023, which is 1.8 times higher than in 2016. Kazakhstan’s share has been gradually growing in the Eurasian region (which also includes Tajikistan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Russia) for the past couple of years. This year it reached 27.2% compared to 26.6% in 2021. The total amount of accumulated mutual FDI in the region reached $48.8 billion over the first six months of 2023.

Analysts from the EDB noted that the total...

Tengizchevroil and Karabatan Utility Solutions were fined for violation of the environmental legislation, according to the prosecutor’s office of the Atyrau region.

«After rigorous analysis, we have identified facts of exceedance of greenhouse gas quotas as well as unauthorized emissions, exceedance of allowed amount of emissions and polluting of land. As a result of these inspections, Karabatan Utility Solutions, LLP and Tengizchevroil, LLP have been brought to administrative liability for violating the rules,» the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Both companies were found guilty by the court and required to pay $23.4 million in...

The Ministry of National Economy of Kazakhstan has commented on the situation around Elem Group, a logistical company from Almaty that on December 7 was added to the Entity List of the Bureau of Industry and Security under the U.S. Department of Commerce.

According to the U.S. Federal Register, the End-User Review Committee (ERC) determined to add Elem Group, LLC, under the destination of Kazakhstan, to the Entity List for «posing a risk of diversion of items subject to the EAR to Russia.»

If a company is added to the Entity List, this means that U.S. companies cannot supply such...

The government of Kazakhstan is going to set a cap for external debt by Samruk Kazyna and Baiterek of $12.5 billion and $5 billion, respectively.

«I am ordering: 1. To approve the maximum amount of external debt for the quasi-state sector for 2024,» the edict by National Economy Minister Alibek Kuantyrov says. The document has been published for public consideration.

According to an annex to the document, the maximum amount of external debt for the quasi-sector is expected to be at $12.5 billion for Samruk-Kazyna and $5 billion for Baiterek. For external debt purposes, the...

The Almaty city administration is forecasting a slowdown of the city’s economic growth to 5.5% in 2024, even though Mayor Yerbolat Dossayev said earlier this year that the city’s GDP would grow by 6.5% this year.

Currently, the authorities forecast a 6.5% growth of the GDP in 2025. They want to achieve this goal by providing financial support to small and medium-sized businesses of at least $98 million per year. Moreover, they expect investments to grow by 10%: to $3.9 billion in 2024 and $4.5 billion in 2025.

«This means that the city’s economy will grow by 47.4% within two...

Around 90,000 face accounts (bots) have signed up to the Kursiv.Media Telegram channel over the past two days. Before that, from December 6 to December 11, Kursiv.Media servers were under DDOS attacks with more than 1.3 billion requests from bots. As a result, the website wasn’t available on several occasions. The media outlet’s channel on Telegram has also been blocked.

What has happened with the Kursiv.Media Telegram channel? The edition’s IT department has managed to stop the registration of new bots. Currently, the IT team is analyzing the channel’s followers and deleting fake accounts.

The TGStat data has shown the...

The Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) has improved its forecast of Kazakhstan’s GDP growth this year to 4.8% in its latest macroeconomic survey. In July, the bank estimated the country’s GDP to grow by 4.3%.

Kazakhstan is ranked third in the EEU, which includes Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Tajikistan, and Central Asia in terms of economic growth after Armenia (8.3%) and Tajikistan (8.2%). The economy of Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Russia is expected to grow by 4.6%, 3.9% and 3.1%, respectively.

Aggregated inflation in the region is going to reach 7.8% by the end of the year. (In November, Kazakhstan reported...

Construction of three coal thermal power plants in Kokshetau, Semey and Ust-Kamenogorsk might be financed at the expense of easy loans from Russian banks. A draft of an agreement between the two countries published for public consideration revealed that the government of Russia wants to subsidize the bank’s interest rate.

«Russia will provide the opportunity to obtain easy (subsidized) interest rate loans from Russian financial institutions to finance supplies of high-tech Russian products and services over contracts,» the document says.

The Samruk Kazyna fund and its subsidiary Samruk Energy will provide credit support for different...

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has included Russian Expobank on its sanctioned list. In early December 2023, some media outlets reported that Igor Kim, co-owner of Expobank, wanted to transform its Kazakhstani microfinance organization Bereke into a bank. The businessman also controls Seif Lombard in Kazakhstan.

As Expobank representatives told Frank Media, the bank continues to work as usual and all transactions are available for those who possess cards issued by the financial institution. The bank’s client will also be able to conduct money transfers to countries considered by Russia as «friendly» with the help of a wide network...

Minister of Finance Yerulan Zhamaubayev said that traffic jams at the border with Kyrgyzstan often occur because of operations by Kazakhstani law enforcement agencies to fight smugglers. He expressed the hope that the problem will disappear shortly and Kazakhstan will become a transit hub for all of Central Asia.

What happened? MP Maksat Tolykbayev asked the minister why there were so many traffic jams at the border between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

«In the vast majority of cases when we have 500 to 600 vehicles in a traffic jam, the cause of this are operations by Kazakhstani...

Kazakhstan is going to cut the number of athletic disciplines that are financially supported with public funds. According to Minister of Tourism and Sport Yermek Marzhikpayev, the list of 180 sports will be cut to just 50 sports.

What happened? The minister of tourism and sport said that the government provides financial support to 180 athletic disciplines, while only 46 of them have been officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee. Moreover, Kazakhstani sportsmen take part only in 20 to 28 sports and usually win in 5 to 7 disciplines. The government is now going to cut the number of...

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev will exercise personal control over creating the first artificial intelligence (AI) system in Kazakhstan. He said that he would meet specialists responsible for the task regularly, the press service of the president reported.

What happened? While delivering a speech at the Altyn Sapa and Paryz awards ceremony, the president said that he is deeply interested in creating an AI system in the country.

«I think that the future of Kazakhstan and its position in the international community depend on this task. That is why I am going to exercise personal control over this...

According to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the new owner of ArcelorMittal Temirtau renamed Qarmet will bear much responsibility to the government.

What should the new AMT owner be prepared for? As the president highlighted, the issue of ownership over the Karaganda Metallurgic Plant has been successfully solved and currently is under the control of a Kazakhstani company.

«The cabinet should give a hand to the company, especially at the initial stage. However, in the end, the new owner will be fully responsible for everything that is happening at the plant. The control will be very strict,» Tokayev...