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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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(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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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(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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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has increased its grain harvest forecast for 2013 to 18.5m tonnes from around 16m tonnes, media reported quoting agriculture minister Asylzhan Mamytbekov. The grain harvest has become an increasingly important part of Kazakhstan’s economy. In 2011 it harvested a post-Soviet record of 27m tonnes of grain.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Indian officials have been negotiating with their Kazakh counterparts to buy into various energy projects since missing out on a stake in the Kashagan Caspian Sea oil field earlier this year, media reported. India thought it had secured an 8.3% share of Kashagan for $5b only for Kazakhstan to hand the stake to China.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
KARAGANDA/Kazakhstan, OCT. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A towering statue of former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin once stood in the main square in Karaganda, an industrial city in central Kazakhstan.
Three years ago Karaganda’s government moved the Lenin statue to a windblown spot on the edge of the city and replaced it with a dazzling white column adorned with a golden eagle and a sun.
The displacement of Lenin fits a wider trend in Kazakhstan — the sweeping away of the symbols of the Soviet past in favour of Kazakh icons.
The new monument in Karaganda is similar to the Kazakh Country monument in Astana, one of many landmarks projecting a national identity.
The Kazakh elite, led by President Nursultan Nazarbayev, has adopted a number of symbols to help propel their narrative. The most obvious are the yurt, a spherical felt home of the nomads, and the samruk, a mythical phoenix-like bird, as well as the horse and the eagle.
Another ubiquitous symbol is the shanyrak, the circular wooden top of the yurt, with its distinctive criss-cross pattern that symbolises home, hearth and family happiness.
Just outside Karaganda, a museum in the village of Dolinka commemorates victims of Soviet political repression. This was once the biggest Soviet gulag in Kazakhstan.
Poignantly, at the entrance is a broken shanyrak representing Kazakhs killed by Soviet repression.
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(Correspondent’s Notebook from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
OCT. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked the country’s long-serving Central Bank chief Grigory Marchenko in a surprise move that may sow doubt over Kazakhstan’s economic direction.
Former economy minister Kairat Kelimbetov will take over from Mr Marchenko.
Mr Nazarbayev didn’t give a clear reason for sacking Mr Marchenko, considered a favourite of investors. Mr Marchenko, 53, was brought in to head Kazakhstan’s Central Bank for a second time in 2009 to help weather the financial crisis. Under his leadership Kazakhstan nationalised a handful of banks that were teetering on the brink of collapse and devalued the tenge national currency.
Mr Marchenko won international plaudits and in 2011 was touted as a possible replacement for Dominique Strass- Kahn, the disgraced French politician, as head of the IMF.
More recently, Kazakhstan’s Central Bank has been grappling with downward pressure on the tenge and the reorganisation of the country’s pension funds.
Mr Nazarbayev may have just decided that it was time for a change and to replace the notoriously independent-minded Mr Marchenko with the more pliant Mr Kelimbetov.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
