OCT. 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan plans to update all its 11 national airports to meet international standards by 2017, media quoted the deputy minister for communications and transport, Azat Bekturov, as saying. Mr Bekturov said the airport at Kokshetau, northern Kazakhstan, had already been upgraded.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 21 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Highlighting just how dangerous driving is in Kazakhstan, media reported that the Pulitzer Center in New York rated Kazakh roads as amongst the most deadly in the world outside Africa. Kazakhstan averages 21.9 deaths per 100,000 people every year. Comparatively, this is seven times more than Sweden.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — At the annual conference of the ruling Nur Otan political party, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said he supported the introduction of a wealth tax and wanted more people to learn English. The Nur Otan conference and Mr Nazarbayev’s pronouncements are a decent weather mast for future policy in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev appointed Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a seasoned politician and diplomat, to be the Speaker of the Senate. Speaker of the Senate is one of the highest ranking positions in the Kazakh government and Mr Tokayev’s appointment triggered succession chatter.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kcell, Kazakhstan’s largest mobile operator, added nearly 175,000 subscribers in the third quarter of 2013, the company said. Controlled by Sweden’s TeliaSonera, Kcell now has 14.25m subscribers. The importance of the Kcell data is that it shows the mobile sector in Kazakhstan is still growing.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Just who is going to succeed the long-standing Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is the biggest political issue in Kazakhstan.
Mr Nazarbayev, 73, has led Kazakhstan since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. He has shaped Kazakhstan. The physical apex of Mr Nazarbayev’s power is his presidential palace, the Akorda, in the centre of Astana.
One of Mr Nazarbayev’s headaches, though, is the succession issue. He doesn’t have an obvious successor capable of holding together Kazakhstan’s notoriously fractious clans.
This means that when Mr Nazarbayev shuffles his lieutenants, it attracts close attention. So, when he pulled the career diplomat Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, 60, from United Nations in Geneva and appointed him to head the Senate, Kazakhstan-watchers started talking about succession.
It’s a familiar position for Mr Tokayev who had been Speaker of the Senate between 2007 and 2011. He has also previously served as PM and foreign minister.
And Mr Tokayev’s promotion to head the Senate is important. According to the constitution, if Mr Nazarbayev couldn’t run the country, for whatever reason, the Speaker of the Senate would take over.
Whether or not that means he will take over the presidency when Mr Nazarbayev finally retires is another question. There’s no doubt, though, that there is still a lot of conjecture and so-called Akorda-ology to come.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will open an embassy in South Africa this year and an embassy in Ethiopia in 2014, marking a decisive diplomatic push into sub-Saharan Africa.
It’s a relatively natural link. Kazakhstan has built up its wealth through the extractive industries. Mining is also important to the economies of sub-Saharan Africa.
Over the last three years or so, Kazakhstan has steadily expanded its diplomatic missions across the world. It has opened up embassies in key emerging market countries such as Indonesia and Brazil and upgraded offices in long-established missions such as in London. It already has embassies in Cairo and Tripoli.
The push into South Africa fits this pattern. It is a growing economy with a large mining component. Establishing a mission in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, is more political, though. Addis Ababa is home to the African Union. By setting up a mission there, Kazakhstan hopes to earn influence within this political block.
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev plans to open the embassy in South Africa when he visits for the first time in December.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 14 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Igor Larra, a reporter for the independent Svoboda Slova newspaper in the city of Aktobe in northern Kazakhstan, has died of injuries he sustained when a group of unidentified men attacked him in August, media reported. News websites said that the attack may have been linked to his work.
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(News report from Issue No. 156, published on Oct. 16 2013)
OCT. 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A gas leak halted output at the Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea for the second time in the past few weeks, media reported. Production facilities at Kashagan cost $50b and took 13 years to build. The oil field started production in September and is key to Kazakhstan’s export aspirations.
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(News report from Issue No. 156, published on Oct. 16 2013)
OCT. 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Bulat Utemuratov, a confident of Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev, signed a preliminary agreement to buy Temirbank and Alliance Bank from the Kazakh government. The Kazakh government bailed out the banks during the 2009 global financial crisis. It owns 67% of Alliance Bank and 79.9% of Temirbank.
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(News report from Issue No. 156, published on Oct. 16 2013)