OCT. 7 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a high-profile corruption case, police charged the former head of Kazakhstan’s Statistics Agency, Anar Meshimbayeva, with stealing 758m tenge ($4.9m) from a budget allocated for a national census in 2009. Ms Meshimbayeva fled Kazakhstan but was arrested in Moscow earlier this year and deported back to Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Momentum is building inside Kazakhstan’s parliament to pass a law that restricts homosexuals. Homosexuality has been legal since 1998 in Kazakhstan but a handful of lawmakers want to reverse this. Earlier this year Russia banned so-called homosexual propaganda.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Samruk-Kazyna, the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund, is continuing to dispense its non-core assets, managing director, Nurlan Rakhmetov, said in a media interview. Mr Rakhmetov said 409 of 560 non-core assets, such as nursing homes and hotels, had already been dropped. Samruk-Kazyna manages roughly $80b worth of assets.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kashagan oil field in the Caspian Sea, vital to Kazakhstan’s long term energy plan, has resumed production after a gas leak halted operations for a week, media quoted energy minister Sauat Mynbayev as saying. He said Kashagan was now producing 61,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd). Commercial output is considered 75,000bpd.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan plans to triple excise duty on cigarettes and alcohol over the next three years, media quoted economy minister Yerbolat Dossayev as saying. Currently a carton of 1,000 cigarettes carries a duty of 1,550 tenge ($10). This could rise to 5,000 tenge by 2016, Mr Dossayev said.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Where Russia goes, Kazakhstan often follows. This mantra is certainly true of economic and international affairs and now it appears to extend to social law-making.
Kazakh parliamentarians have been making speeches and canvassing support to bring in a law similar to the one passed by Russia earlier this year that banned so-called homosexual propaganda from being taught at schools.
The Russian law triggered an international outcry and calls to boycott Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi next year.
But a group of reactionary parliamentarians in Kazakhstan have seized on the Russian experience as their chance to push through a similar law.
Bakhytbek Smagul, a member of the lower house of the Kazakh parliament for President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan party, has been leading the drive to ban so-called homosexual propaganda in Kazakhstan.
And he has built support, despite homosexuality being legalised in Kazakhstan since 1998.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Shymkent refinery, one of three in Kazakhstan, has closed for a month for planned upgrade work, PetroKazakhstan, the plant owner, said. Kazakhstan has been experiencing increasing pressure on petrol supplies throughout the country this year. The government plans to build a new refinery.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — If the outgoing Kazakh Central Bank chief Grigory Marchenko was an independent-minded career finance-man, Kairat Kelimbetov, the new one, could not be more different.
Mr Kelimbetov, 44, has instead picked a career path through the ranks of Kazakh officialdom based on efficiency and party loyalty. Now he has been thrust into the spotlight as the surprise choice of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to replace Mr Marchenko.
Some say Mr Nazarbayev sacked Mr Marchenko, others that he resigned for family reasons. Whatever the reason, Mr Kelimbetov takes over a demanding brief. Mr Nazarbayev has said that he wants to unite Kazakhstan’s pension funds. There is also intensifying downward pressure on the tenge.
Mr Kelimbetov is the son of a well-known Kazakh academic. His peers are the group of Kazakhs in their mid-40s who are now assuming some of the top jobs. These include Timur Kulibayev, the president’s son-in-law.
He started his career at various government planning departments before becoming the minister of economy in 2002. That posting launched his career which began to carry the hallmarks of a favourite of Mr Nazarbayev.
Mr Kelimbetov was made a deputy head of Mr Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan political party in 2007 and for a few months in 2008 he was head of the presidential administration, a powerful position. In 2008, he took over as chairman of Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna until 2012 when he became a deputy prime minister.
At each stage of his career, Mr Kelimbetov has parachuted into a role picked for him by Mr Nazarbayev. Heading the Central Bank is another important notch in his distinctive career resume.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
SEPT. 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s oil wealth is masking major structural problems, a report by the Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group (ICG) said. Corruption, a lack of a succession plan, spreading Islamic extremism and inequalities are the main problems, the report said.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
OCT. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan may look like a stable and prosperous nation, the influential Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group (ICG) wrote in a new report, but this glossy facade hides serious structural problems.
The ICG report is a rare foray into Kazakhstan. The think tank normally concentrates on Kazakhstan’s more obviously problematic southern Central Asian neighbours.
And that’s really the point that the ICG makes. Kazakhstan may look different from the rest of Central Asia but its energy wealth is hiding very similar problems.
These are, the report said, an aging autocratic leader without a proper succession plan, official corruption, spreading Islamic extremism and a yawning inequality gap.
Kazakh officials point to the country’s rise through various global indexes but the ICG was unequivocal.
“Kazakhstan risks becoming just another Central Asian authoritarian regime that squandered the advantages bestowed on it by abundant natural resources,” it said.
Perhaps the least documented of these issues is the inequality gap. Astana and Almaty are booming. It doesn’t take long, though, for the landscape to change.
“Many rural residents learn only from state television that they live in a prosperous energy-rich country,” the ICG wrote. “Residents of a small village only 60km from Astana do not have a regular supply of drinking water in the winter and say the authorities have ignored their situation for years.”
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)