APRIL 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh mobile operator Kcell, controlled by Sweden’s TeliaSonera, said it had added 310,000 subscribers in Q1 2013, suggesting that Kazakhstan’s economy is still buoyant. At the end of March, Kcell said it had 13.8m subscribers and was the biggest mobile phone network in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 132, published on April 22 2013)
APRIL 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Slowly, but steadily, it appears that Kazakhstan genuinely wants to take on a greater leadership role on development issues across the wider region.
Deputy PM Alexei Volkov said that the Kazakh authorities want to turn Almaty into a regional development centre, local media reported.
At the fulcrum of this centre, Mr Volkov said, would be Kaz Aid which would mix development and humanitarian work.
Mr Volkov also said that giving Almaty a similar status to Geneva, Vienna or Bangkok in the aid world would help generate larger, more influential humanitarian and development projects across a region stretching from Afghanistan to the South Caucasus.
Kazakhstan’s foreign partners will be pleased to hear this talk. They have long pressed for Kazakhstan to become more involved in regional affairs.
The need for a more interventionist Kazakhstan has become more acute with NATO planning to exit Afghanistan by 2014.
And there is the geo-political dimension. At the same time the West is reducing its influence in Central Asia and Afghanistan, China is increasing its own reach.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Two Kazakh soldiers committed suicide on consecutive days, local media reported, highlighting a continued problem with bullying in the military. In Astana on April 4, one soldier hanged himself. The following day, in Karaganda, another soldier shot himself. Bullying is common in armies across the ex-Soviet Union.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Kazakhstan arrested a human resources manager in Shymkent, in the south of the country, for demanding a $50,000 bribe for a job, local media reported. The case throws a rare spotlight over official corruption in Kazakhstan where lucrative jobs are often bought.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Perhaps wary of potential civil strife, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev called on his government to try to spread Kazakhstan’s increasing wealth more evenly.
Signs of inequalities in Kazakhstan are not hard to find. In Almaty, the latest Western SUV competes for road space with battered and rusting second-hand cars. Street vendors sell shashlik, barbequed meat on skewers, for a few tenge across the street from restaurants charging hundreds of dollars for dishes cooked by a French chef.
And these inequalities are potentially dangerous, as a demonstration in the western town of Zhanaozen on Dec. 14 2011 that ended with the death of at least 14 protesters showed. The Kazakh government blamed inequality and a lack of job opportunities for the demonstration.
Now Mr Nazarbayev has said that more can be done. Specifically, he said that roughly 8% of families in Kazakhstan lived off $100 per person per month. According to the World Bank, which measures inequality using the Gini coefficient, Kazakhstan has a sizeable inequality gap. That gap, though, is slowly reducing.
The Gini coefficient measures inequality using a score of zero to 100, zero being perfectly equal. The latest data on the World Bank’s website showed that Kazakhstan scored 29 in 2009, down from 33.9 in 2003. This compares favourably with its neighbours and is lower than many European countries.
Still, as Mr Nazarbayev knows, perception is ever important.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 7 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A second round of negotiations in Almaty between Iran and a US-led group ended without a resolution to the long-running dispute over the Iranian nuclear programme. Participants, though, praised Kazakhstan for the smooth running of the discussions.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh finance company Astana Finance is looking for a new date to restructure its $2b debt after missing a previous deadline set on March 28, Reuters quoted managing director Daniyar Nurskenov as saying. Astana Finance, set up 13 years ago, defaulted on its debts in 2009 along with three other Kazakh banks.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev made one of his regular visits to Beijing to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. During the visit, Mr Nazarbayev agreed a number of bilateral deals including an extension, media reported, to a pipeline pumping oil from Kazakhstan to China.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan has attracted 80% of all foreign direct investment in Central Asia since 1993, media in Baku quoted Kazakh first deputy PM Bakytzhan Sagintayev as saying at a conference.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A demented camel attacked and killed its elderly female owner in western Kazakhstan, local media reported. The story highlights the continued widespread tradition in Kazakhstan of rearing camels. Camel meat is often eaten and the milk is fermented into an alcoholic drink called shubat.
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(News report from Issue No. 130, published on April 5 2013)
