INSIDE N o 1 (44) www.astanatimes.com WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2014 US$ 1 = 154.60 KZT 1 Euro = 211.30 KZT 1 Rouble = 4.67 KZT -5 ° C / -2 ° C NATION New Emergency Hospital Opens in Semey, Joins Other New Medical Facilities in Region A2 New Laws on Taxation and Social Benefits Come Into Effect A2 ECONOMY & BUSINESS Oil and Gas Production Set to Increase A4 Businessman Gives $100,000 in Grants to Startups A5 EDITORIAL Growing Global Nuclear Power Industry Requires Tighter Regulations A6 OPINIONS SULEIMEN: Energy Cooperation between Kazakhstan and China A7 KONYROVA: 2013 Brought Advancements to Kazakh Oil and Gas Industry A7 NATION & CAPITAL Winter Fun: Skating on the Open Ice B1 Sixth Winter Charity Masquerade Raises More Than 13 Million Tenge B8 NTI Report Notes Progress in Security of Global Nuclear Materials, Says Major Challenges Remain By Artur Abubakirov ASTANA – The 2014 NTI Nu- clear Materials Security Index, which assesses nuclear materials security conditions in 176 coun- tries and which was released on Jan. 8 by the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), reported progress in global efforts to reduce and secure nuclear mate- rials while noting main challenges that remain in this area such as cre- ating a unified global system for monitoring all nuclear materials. “World leaders at the third Nu- clear Security Summit in the Neth- erlands in March 2014 can point to measurable progress toward the goal of reducing and securing the materials needed to build a nuclear bomb,” the report said. The report, developed together with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), was released at a press conference in the U.S. capital headlined by former U.S. Senator and NTI Co-Chairman Sam Nunn and NTI President Joan Rohlfing. “We know there is nearly 2,000 metric tons of this material spread across hundreds of sites in 25 coun- tries, and we know much of it is not effectively secured,” Nunn said. “We know that terrorists would only need enough highly enriched uranium to fit into a 5-pound bag of sugar or an amount of plutonium the size of a grapefruit.” The index, Nunn said, was cre- ated to respond for this sobering set of facts. “I view the Index as a framework—grounded in solid data which should help inform our priorities globally in terms of securing nuclear material and pre- venting catastrophic terrorism.” The second edition of the NTI Index assesses progress states have made in improving nuclear materi- als security conditions. The analy- sis in the report was based on six factors: quantities and sites, secu- rity and control measures, global norms, domestic commitments and capacity, and risk environment. According to the report, seven countries—Austria, Czech Repub- lic, Hungary, Mexico, Sweden, Ukraine and Vietnam—have re- moved all or most of their stocks of weapons-usable nuclear materials from their territories. The number of nations with appreciable fuel for atomic bombs also lowered to 25 from 32 since the first report was issued in January 2012. Continued on Page A3 Kazakh Expat Gains Experience, Advocates for Home Country Abroad By Jan Furst ASTANA – While more and more foreigners are moving to Ka- zakhstan, tales of Kazakh expatri- ates abroad are still rare. Astana native Raushan Makhmutova, who has been working abroad since 2006, is one of Kazakhstan’s relatively small number of global workers and travellers. There are dozens of pins on Makhmutova’s personal map of travels, marking places from Western Europe to Southeast Asia to South Africa. Though she has worked abroad for years now, she still plans to bring her experience back to her home country. “I have thought of working in Kazakhstan,” she said. “It’s my homeland. But I will seri- ously think of that when I get enough experience to be useful in my country, and after I have travelled enough. I am still full of ideas of new places to visit; I still have too much desire to explore the world. I love getting to know places I had only seen in books or movies, tasting new cuisines and learning new cus- toms. I love meeting new people and learning how our cultures are alike and how they are different,” Makhmutova said. She started working abroad when she got a job with Bellzone, a company that develops iron ore and mineral assets in West Africa, in 2006. She first worked for the company in Kazakhstan, then got an offer to work in the Democratic Republic of Congo from one of her former colleagues. “At that time, I was working as an interpreter back in Kazakhstan. But in Congo I started my first job as a document controller. Later, when the project was over, I started working as project coordinator in Ghana for a Canadian gold mining company called Kinross. I always work [monthly] shifts. I gained a lot of experience in construction, though I do not have any special education in it. International com- panies value experience and your will to work and learn.” Continued on Page B5 Bitumen Plant Commissioned in Aktau, Becomes New Link Between China and Kazakhstan By Rufiya Ospanova AKTAU – A bitumen plant capa- ble of processing 1 million tons of oil and producing about 400,000 tons of high-quality oxidised bitu- men and 120,000 tons of modified bitumen officially opened in Aktau on Dec. 20. President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev took part in the opening via teleconference. The Caspi Bitum joint venture, which built and owns the plant, is one of 34 sites on the regional In- dustrialisation Map. Caspi Bitum is 50-50 percent owned by Kazakh- stan Petrochemical Industries JSC and CITIC Kazakhstan CJSC. The former is the subsidiary of KazMu- nayGas national oil and gas com- pany and the latter is the subsidiary of CITIC (China International Trust and Investment Corporation) Group. Continued on Page A4 Presidential Astana Dakar Team Chases Adventure in South America By Alex Lee While most of Kazakhstan is covered with snow and fighting gusty winds, the Presidential Asta- na Dakar Team races through dust, mud and sand on the other side of the planet in South America as a participant in the prestigious off road race Dakar Rally – Dakar 2014. The 13-stage Dakar 2014 race being held Jan. 5 through Jan. 18 runs through Argentina, Bolivia and Chile and offers plenty of adrenaline and adventure. The Kazakh team is holding steady in the race standings, but has faced plenty of challenges. On day two, one of the Kazakh crews lost their vehicle. A tire on Bauyrzhan Issabayev and Gabdulla Ashimov’s Toyota ignited at 150 km/hr and within moments had engulfed the vehicle in flames. Issabayev and Ashimov barely escaped the fire. Continued on Page B7 The Presidential Astana Dakar Team races through dust, mud and sand in South America as a participant in Dakar Rally – Dakar 2014. The new plant is capable of processing one million tons of oil and producing about 400,000 tons of high-quality oxidised bitumen. Raushan Makhmutova, one of the growing number of Kazakh expatriates, finds a lot of good feelings in Africa.
Transcript
InsIde
No 1 (44) www.astanatimes.comWednesday, january 15, 2014
naTIonNew Emergency Hospital Opens in Semey, Joins Other New Medical Facilities in Region a2 New Laws on Taxation and Social Benefits Come Into Effect a2
economy & BUsInessOil and Gas Production Set to Increase a4Businessman Gives $100,000 in Grants to Startups a5
edIToRIalGrowing Global Nuclear Power Industry Requires Tighter Regulations a6
opInIonsSulEIMEN: Energy Cooperation between Kazakhstan and China a7KONyROva: 2013 Brought advancements to Kazakh Oil and Gas Industry a7
naTIon & capITalWinter Fun: Skating on the Open Ice B1Sixth Winter Charity Masquerade Raises More Than 13 Million Tenge B8
nTI Report notes progress in security of Global nuclear materials, says major challenges Remain
By artur abubakirov
aSTaNa – The 2014 NTI Nu-clear Materials Security Index, which assesses nuclear materials security conditions in 176 coun-tries and which was released on Jan. 8 by the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), reported progress in global efforts to reduce and secure nuclear mate-rials while noting main challenges that remain in this area such as cre-ating a unified global system for monitoring all nuclear materials.
“World leaders at the third Nu-clear Security Summit in the Neth-erlands in March 2014 can point to measurable progress toward the goal of reducing and securing the materials needed to build a nuclear bomb,” the report said.
The report, developed together with the Economist Intelligence unit (EIu), was released at a press conference in the u.S. capital headlined by former u.S. Senator and NTI Co-Chairman Sam Nunn and NTI President Joan Rohlfing.
“We know there is nearly 2,000 metric tons of this material spread across hundreds of sites in 25 coun-tries, and we know much of it is not effectively secured,” Nunn said.
“We know that terrorists would only need enough highly enriched uranium to fit into a 5-pound bag of sugar or an amount of plutonium the size of a grapefruit.”
The index, Nunn said, was cre-ated to respond for this sobering set of facts. “I view the Index as a framework—grounded in solid data which should help inform our priorities globally in terms of securing nuclear material and pre-venting catastrophic terrorism.”
The second edition of the NTI Index assesses progress states have made in improving nuclear materi-als security conditions. The analy-sis in the report was based on six factors: quantities and sites, secu-rity and control measures, global norms, domestic commitments and capacity, and risk environment.
according to the report, seven countries—austria, Czech Repub-lic, Hungary, Mexico, Sweden, ukraine and vietnam—have re-moved all or most of their stocks of weapons-usable nuclear materials from their territories. The number of nations with appreciable fuel for atomic bombs also lowered to 25 from 32 since the first report was issued in January 2012.
continued on page a3
Kazakh expat Gains experience, advocates for Home country abroad
By Jan Furst
aSTaNa – While more and more foreigners are moving to Ka-zakhstan, tales of Kazakh expatri-ates abroad are still rare. astana native Raushan Makhmutova, who has been working abroad since 2006, is one of Kazakhstan’s relatively small number of global workers and travellers.
There are dozens of pins on Makhmutova’s personal map of travels, marking places from Western Europe to Southeast asia to South africa. Though she has worked abroad for years now, she still plans to bring her experience back to her home country.
“I have thought of working
in Kazakhstan,” she said. “It’s my homeland. But I will seri-ously think of that when I get enough experience to be useful in my country, and after I have travelled enough. I am still full of ideas of new places to visit; I still have too much desire to explore the world. I love getting to know places I had only seen in books or movies, tasting new cuisines and learning new cus-toms. I love meeting new people and learning how our cultures are alike and how they are different,” Makhmutova said.
She started working abroad when she got a job with Bellzone, a company that develops iron ore and mineral assets in West africa,
in 2006. She first worked for the company in Kazakhstan, then got an offer to work in the Democratic Republic of Congo from one of her former colleagues.
“at that time, I was working as an interpreter back in Kazakhstan. But in Congo I started my first job as a document controller. later, when the project was over, I started working as project coordinator in Ghana for a Canadian gold mining company called Kinross. I always work [monthly] shifts. I gained a lot of experience in construction, though I do not have any special education in it. International com-panies value experience and your will to work and learn.”
continued on page B5
Bitumen plant commissioned in aktau, Becomes new link Between china and Kazakhstan
By Rufiya Ospanova
aKTau – a bitumen plant capa-ble of processing 1 million tons of oil and producing about 400,000 tons of high-quality oxidised bitu-
men and 120,000 tons of modified bitumen officially opened in Aktau on Dec. 20. President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev took part in the opening via teleconference.
The Caspi Bitum joint venture,
which built and owns the plant, is one of 34 sites on the regional In-dustrialisation Map. Caspi Bitum is 50-50 percent owned by Kazakh-stan Petrochemical Industries JSC and CITIC Kazakhstan CJSC. The
former is the subsidiary of KazMu-nayGas national oil and gas com-pany and the latter is the subsidiary of CITIC (China International Trust and Investment Corporation) Group.
continued on page a4
presidential astana dakar Team chases adventure in south america
By alex lee
While most of Kazakhstan is covered with snow and fighting gusty winds, the Presidential asta-na Dakar Team races through dust, mud and sand on the other side of the planet in South america as a participant in the prestigious off
road race Dakar Rally – Dakar 2014.
The 13-stage Dakar 2014 race being held Jan. 5 through Jan. 18 runs through argentina, Bolivia and Chile and offers plenty of adrenaline and adventure.
The Kazakh team is holding steady in the race standings, but has
faced plenty of challenges. On day two, one of the Kazakh crews lost their vehicle. a tire on Bauyrzhan Issabayev and Gabdulla ashimov’s Toyota ignited at 150 km/hr and within moments had engulfed the vehicle in flames. Issabayev and Ashimov barely escaped the fire.
continued on page B7
The presidential astana dakar Team races through dust, mud and sand in south america as a participant in dakar Rally – dakar 2014.
The new plant is capable of processing one million tons of oil and producing about 400,000 tons of high-quality oxidised bitumen.
Raushan Makhmutova, one of the growing number of Kazakh expatriates, finds a lot of good feelings in Africa.
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Wednesday, january 15, 2014
NATIONdomesTIc
news In BRIeFnew emergency Hospital opens in semey, Joins other new medical Facilities in Region
By aigul Bidanova
SEMEy – an emergency hos-pital with the capacity to treat 325 patients officially opened in Semey at the end of December in a cere-mony attended by East Kazakhstan Oblast akim (Governor) Berdybek Saparbayev and vice Minister of Healthcare Eric Bayzhunussov.
The new medical facility was built through the 100 Schools, 100 Hospitals programme. It was de-signed to care for 325 patients and its clinic to handle 500 visits per day. The hospital and clinic cost 10.8 billion tenge (uS$69.9 mil-lion) to build and the equipment installed cost over 2.8 billion tenge (uS$18.1 million).
“Despite the global crisis, over the past 10 years, Kazakhstan has
built more than 500 health facili-ties. Fifteen years ago we could only dream about this. The new building is equipped with new technologies, CT scans and other modern medical devices,” Bayz-hunussov said at the ceremony.
The vice minister also noted that the Semey region is one of the most promising for healthcare due to its developing nuclear medicine and oncology services. During the So-viet times, the region hosted the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, and while this created huge problems in terms of higher cancer rates, the former test site is now used as a centre of peaceful nuclear research.
The region built 13 major medi-cal facilities and 11 rural health stations in 2013 in an effort to provide oncology services and
reduce cardiovascular morbidity and maternal and infant mortality. a children’s tuberculosis hospital funded by Saudi arabia (at a cost of 1.3 billion tenge; uS$8.4 mil-lion) is nearing completion. Sapar-bayev said that a medical services centre worth about 13 billion tenge
(uS$84.2 million) will be com-missioned soon.
a family outpatient clinic opened in Prirechnoe village on the same day the emergency hos-pital opened. It will take patients from the local village as well as the nearby Muzdybay and Zharkyn
settlements. Through the Sala-matty Kazakhstan (Healthy Ka-zakhstan) programme, 74 million tenge (uS$479,057) was allocated to build the new clinic this year. Today, 16 specialists are work-ing there, including doctors and nurses.
new laws on Taxation and Social Benefits Come Into effect
By alina Usmanova
aSTaNa – a number of new laws came into effect on Jan. 1, including laws raising taxes and increasing social benefits.
Owners of expensive, high-engine-capacity vehicles will pay more in taxes in 2014. Cars with engine capacities of more than 3,000 cubic centimetres produced or imported into Kazakhstan after Dec. 31, 2013, will pay a new rate based on monthly calculation in-dex (MCI) on their cars according to engine size.
The rates for vehicles with en-gine volumes of 3-3.2 litres are 35 MCIs; from 3.2-3.5 litres, 46 MCIs and from 3.5-4 litres, 66 MCIs. The monthly calculation in-dex at the end of 2013 was 1,731 tenge (uS$11.20).
as of Jan. 1 of this year, cars with engine volumes of 4-5 litres will be taxed at 130 MCIs and of more than five litres at 200 MCIs. The tax exemption for war veter-ans or the equivalent for cars with engine volumes of more than four litres has now been abolished.
On Nov. 21, 2013, members of the Senate adopted the law “On amendments and additions to some legislative acts of Kazakhstan on
the issues of taxation,” raising excise tax rates on alcohol and to-bacco products. The amendments will provide for a gradual increase in the rate of excise tax on strong alcohol products from 500 tenge (about uS$3.24) per litre to 1,600 tenge (uS$10.36) per litre.
Excise taxes on tobacco prod-ucts will be increased from 1,550 (about uS$10) tenge to 5,000 tenge (uS$32.37) per 1,000 units or annually between 2014-2016.
The base rate for assessing property tax has also doubled, increasing from 30,000 tenge (uS$194.25) to 60,000 tenge (uS$388.50) per square metre in astana and almaty and from 18,000 tenge (uS$116.55) to 36,000 tenge (uS$233.10) per square metre in regional centres. Properties worth 150 million tenge (uS$971,250) or more will see their tax rates double, to 2 percent. Earlier, this rate ranged from 0.05 percent for properties with an as-sessed value of up to 1 million tenge (uS$6,475) up to 1 percent for property assessed at over 120 million tenge (uS$777,000).
land intended for housing or other buildings that is not being used for that purpose will see taxes increase tenfold.
Pensions for many recipients will increase by 9 percent this year.
Social disability and loss of bread-winner benefits will also be increased according to changes in the cost of living. Special benefits from special lists one and two and the monthly allowance for child care will also increase due to the increased size of the MCI. as of Jan. 1, MCI stands at 1,852 tenge (uS$12).
a temporary, six-month ban on the export of certain types of pe-troleum products was also intro-duced on Jan. 1.
“In order to prevent a critical shortage and price increase for petroleum products on the do-mestic market, the government of Kazakhstan decides to introduce a six-month ban on the export of light distillates and products, kero-sene, gas oil and other petroleum products, except for special petrol and home heating oil,” the govern-mental decree said.
The implementation of the Bal-apan state programme will be ex-tended until 2020, pursuant to a government resolution released on Jan. 9. Balapan was adopted in Kazakhstan in 2010 on the instruc-tion of President Nursultan Naz-arbayev. Implementation of the programme, which sought to in-volve 70 percent of Kazakhstan’s children in preschool education, was expected to be completed in 2014. The extended programme will seek to enroll 100 percent of the nation’s children in preschool by 2020 as well as ensure that 100 percent of children aged 5-6 have preschool training and expand the network of preschool education institutions in the country. Pro-gramme financing for 2014-2020 will reach 190.5 billion tenge (uS$1.2 billion). Over 41.2 bil-lion tenge (uS$266.9 million) is planned to be allocated from the national budget and 149.3 billion (uS$966.1 million) from the local budget. The government resolu-tion comes into effect on the day of its signing and is subject to manda-tory promulgation.
In preparing for EXPO 2017, astana will become a greener and more environmentally friendly city. about 40 percent of the capi-tal’s territory is slated to be oc-cupied by urban forests by 2017. “The territory of the city is 71,000 hectares. In November 2013, a project to plant urban forests in the city was initiated. It will be imple-mented as part of the general lay-out of the city. urban forests and parks will be created within the project. Some of them already ex-ist in and around the city. We plan to turn forests outside the city into urban forests and parks in the ter-ritory of astana,” Head of the De-partment of architecture and Town Planning of astana vitaly Siletsky said. according to Siletsky, green belts will run between seven main avenues of the city, reaching as far as the bank of the yessil River. Planting parks and urban forests is the main trend in developing and amending the general layout of astana.
Some service members of the armed forces of Kazakhstan and their families celebrated the new year in new apartments. On the threshold of the holiday, the Min-istry of Defence provided the fam-ilies of 16 servicemen in ayagoz and 80 servicemen in Taldykorgan military reservations with hous-ing. The Ministry of Defence pays close attention to the living con-ditions of officers and soldiers in cities and military reservations. In 2013, military men in different re-gions of the country were provided with housing. The ministry built houses and dormitories with a to-tal floor area of 27,189 square me-tres and purchased 245 apartments with a total floor area of 14,653 square metres in order to provide servicemen with housing last year. Repairs were conducted on 113 apartments.
a group of scientists from Step-nogorsk have developed a project to introduce a biotechnology for breeding a virus-free, elite breed of planting potatoes. The idea of the group, headed by Candidate of Chemical Sciences Daniyar Bal-apanov, was among 350 projects recommended by foreign experts for implementation and financing. The grant competition is part of a larger project on commercialisation of technologies run by the Minis-try of Education and Science and supported by the World Bank and the Government of Kazakhstan. The first batch of this new sort of potatoes will be grown next year, The authorities of Stepnogorsk also supported this project, allo-cating an area for its implementa-tion. It is also relevant in terms of ensuring the food belt around the capital city,” the statement reads. Potato yields are a problem in Ka-zakhstan, where they are 2-3 times lower than in the West, primarily due to a lack of high-quality seeds. New biotechnological methods like this will promote the produc-tion of new potato strains in the akmola region, rather than the im-port of other seeds.
year in Review poll shows curious, proud nation
By Raushan shulembaeva
aSTaNa – according to a re-cent opinion poll by the Institute of Philosophy, Political Science and Religious Studies under Kazakh-stan’s Ministry of Education and Science, the citizens of Kazakh-stan today perceive themselves as living in a full-fledged, self-suffi-cient state with a sound economy and political system.
One main trend in 2013 is a surge of public interest in national history. This is attributed to Presi-dent Nursultan Nazarbayev’s pro-gramme, The People in the Flow of History, part of his Kazakhstan 2050 Strategy.
Sociology Professor Zarema Shaukenova, director of the Insti-tute and a member of the National academy of Sciences of Kazakh-stan, tallied up the findings of the poll and the respondents’ attitudes about the past year.
What significant events of the past year did respondents name?
The poll showed a high public interest and trust in the President and in what he said. The respond-ents especially liked his criticism of the government over the fail-ure of pension reform. President Nursultan Nazarbayev definitely associated it with the failure of its information policy—insufficient work with the media, poor coordi-nation of outreach activities. [They also liked] his part in the expanded meeting with the government in October.
In this harsh criticism, he largely relied on the support of the popula-tion, for whom these reforms were initiated. People have more confi-dence in the policy, since the prob-lems have been openly exposed in their true colours. The share of re-spondents strongly supporting the state policy rose from 30 percent to 39 percent. The share of those inclined to approve of the political course is up too, from 82 percent to 86 percent.
However, the survey showed
a decline of confidence in local governments. Respondents say they fail to address acute social problems such as the creation of new jobs, employment for people with disabilities, housing and other problems.
What are the poll findings con-cerning Kazakhstan’s interna-tional standing?
Firstly, all the respondents men-tioned our country’s participation in the G20 summit in September 2013, in which Kazakhstan re-layed the experience of the astana Economic Forum and countering crises in the world economy.
It should be noted that in May 2013, along with the regular asta-na Economic Forum, our capital hosted the first UN World Anti-Crisis Conference. Kazakhs are proud of this, and they appear to be well informed about these events. according to the responses, [these events] improve Kazakhstan’s in-ternational standing, increasing its chances for membership in the uN Security Council.
One of the major steps in this direction, respondents said, is the December 2013 decision by the Parliament to approve a bill to send Kazakhstan’s peacekeeping officers, under UN auspices, to in-ternational areas of tension. People think this will be important both in terms of the operational experi-ence that our military would gain and for boosting Kazakhstan’s geopolitical image.
Do the respondents believe Ka-zakhstan will be among the 30 most developed nations?
In this respect, we have asked how relevant the idea of the uni-versal Society of labour is. Most respondents believe that the per-ception of the value of work should be key in ranking the 30 most developed countries. But the value of work and its efficiency need strengthening, they believe. That’s the task for 2014, to be at-tained through further social mod-ernisation. The Kazakh senate in session
a new emergency hospital in semey has the capacity to treat 325 patients.
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exTeRnalnews In BRIeF
eurasia&world
continued from page a1
With one being the most posi-tive ranking, Kazakhstan was ranked 15 among the 25 states with weapons-usable nuclear ma-terials with 73 points. [While the authors of the report say Kazakh-stan’s ranking remains unchanged from the previous report, the 2012 report actually had Kazakhstan at the 22nd position with 71 points.].
The report also noted areas where Kazakhstan can improve.
“although Kazakhstan im-proved its score by becoming a member of the G-8 Global Part-nership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, this improvement is offset by the fact that Kazakhstan now transports weapons-usable nuclear material domestically,” the report noted without explain-ing how this affects the security of materials or the rankings since the transportation has been done to the highest security standards and no incidents were ever reported.
“In the future, Kazakhstan’s nu-clear materials security conditions could be further improved by re-ducing its materials quantities, strengthening its laws and regula-tions for the physical security of materials in transport to reflect the latest IaEa nuclear security guidelines, publishing an annual report about nuclear security, and making public declarations about its materials stocks,” the report said. Its authors also highlighted what they consider Kazakhstan’s uncertain political situation, gov-ernance challenges and corruption among public officials as adverse-ly affecting nuclear materials se-curity conditions.
The NTI Index encourages gov-ernments to take actions to reduce risks and to provide assurances about the security of the world’s deadliest materials.
“The NTI Index reveals posi-tive developments in a host of countries, reflected in their im-proved scores, when it comes (a) to decreasing quantities of materi-als; (b) to strengthening physical protection measures; and (c) to passing new domestic laws and regulations aimed at better se-curing materials at facilities and during transport, which is when materials are most vulnerable to theft,” the report stated.
Recommendations about the need to ensure greater transpar-ency and accountability were ba-sically provided to all countries with nuclear materials. Generally, the Index recommends that states:
• Build confidence in the effec-tiveness of their security practices through reassuring steps such as participating in international peer reviews, publishing relevant regu-lations and declaring inventories.
• Become parties to the nuclear security treaties that govern nu-clear terrorism and physical se-curity.
• Strengthen voluntary mecha-nisms such as the IaEa’s Nuclear Security Fund and the World In-stitute for Nuclear Security.
• Secure military and other non-civilian materials to the same or higher standards as civilian. about 85 percent of global stocks of weapons-usable nuclear mate-rials are outside civilian programs (because they are either military or other non-civilian programs) and are not covered by IaEa guidelines or the physical protec-tion treaty or its 2005 amendment.
at the report launch, NTI Presi-dent Joan Rohlfing said govern-ments should make it a priority to build a global nuclear materials security system.
“As the Index findings make clear, right now we have no shared global system for nuclear security,” Rohlfing said. “That means no common international standards. No governing body with the mandate and resources for proper oversight. No expecta-tion for states to take actions that build confidence in the effective-ness of their security practices. And finally, no mechanism for
holding countries accountable.”Such calls support and build on
the general thrust of the discus-sions at the second Global Nu-clear Security Summit in Seoul in March 2012, including the re-marks made there by Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev. In particular, he called for the unification and codification of accumulated international experi-ence in developing the peaceful atom with a view of adopting le-gally binding standards of nuclear safety. He also called for transpar-ency and quick reaction to any in-cidents at nuclear facilities with a view of developing clear mecha-nisms of rapid reaction to emer-gencies; as well as equality and trust, meaning equal rights for all states to access peaceful nuclear technologies.
NTI and the EIu relied on the International Panel of Experts to shape the current NTI Index. The group included experts from argentina, australia, China, France, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Russia, South africa, Sweden, the united Kingdom, the united States, and vietnam. among the panelists were a repre-sentative from the World Institute for Nuclear Security and a former IAEA official. NTI, together with
the international panel of nuclear security experts and a number of technical advisors, developed the framework and priorities that de-fine effective nuclear materials security conditions.
Eliminating weapons-usable nuclear materials is seen as the most significant step a country can take toward ensuring that ter-rorists can’t get access to the ma-terials needed to build a nuclear bomb.
Since 2012, Kazakhstan has re-duced its stock of weapons-usable nuclear material. This decrease was made possible, in part, by several steps and operations im-plemented in previous years.
Thus, Kazakhstan took a step to eliminate 33 kilograms of high-enriched uranium at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in almaty by down blending the material into low-enriched uranium at the ulba Metallurgical Plant in ust-Kame-nogorsk.
In addition, Kazakh, u.S. and Russian agencies successfully completed a complicated project known as the Degelen Project, which ensured permanent safe storage for hundreds of kilograms of nuclear material that had re-mained in Degelen Mountain tun-nels on the former Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Eastern Kazakh-stan since the Soviet nuclear tests.
The once-secret project at the Degelen Mountain Complex took 17 years to complete and involved hundreds of kilograms of weapons-usable nuclear mate-rial—both plutonium and highly-enriched uranium—that had been secured in sealed tunnels. Scav-enger activity in the area raised the threat that some of the mate-rial might be stolen and used for dangerous purposes. The tunnels were reopened, filled with special cement that rendered the nuclear material unusable for weapons purposes, and then resealed.
This collaborative effort, an-nounced at the 2012 Nuclear Se-curity Summit in Seoul by the presidents of Kazakhstan, the united States and the Russian Federation, was unprecedented in its actions to combat the threat of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.
In august 2013, Harvard uni-versity’s Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the atom (MTa) re-leased a report called “Plutonium Mountain: Inside the 17-year Mis-sion to Secure a Dangerous lega-cy of Soviet Nuclear Testing.” In
the report, Eben Harrell, an asso-ciate with MTa, and Pulitzer Prize winning author and Washington Post reporter David Hoffman tell how dedicated scientists and engi-neers in three countries overcame suspicions, secrecy, bureaucracy and logistical obstacles to secure more than a dozen bombs worth of plutonium that had been left be-hind at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan after the collapse of the Soviet union.
The former Soviet union con-ducted underground nuclear tests at the Degelen Mountain Complex from 1961 to 1989. In 1991, even before independence from the uSSR, President Nursultan Naz-arbayev closed down the Semipa-latinsk nuclear test site, one of the largest in the world, making Ka-zakhstan the first country to do so.
after independence in 1991, Kazakhstan voluntarily re-nounced the world’s fourth largest nuclear arsenal, returned to Rus-sia the nuclear weapons it inher-ited from the former Soviet union and joined the Nuclear Non-Pro-liferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapon state.
Over the past 22 years, Ka-zakhstan has remained a strategic partner in some of the most im-portant nuclear security and non-proliferation efforts worldwide. Kazakhstan is cooperating with the world community to make the world safer from the threat of nu-clear terrorism by converting and removing nuclear materials that may be attractive to terrorists, se-curing nuclear material at produc-tion and storage facilities, as well as combating the trafficking of il-licit nuclear materials.
In addition, Kazakhstan has proven its commitment to pre-venting the proliferation of nucle-ar weapons and is working togeth-er with other states to continue reducing the proliferation threats associated with nuclear materials, technologies and expertise.
In 2011, NTI chose President Nazarbayev among the 10 ma-jor public figures from Australia, Britain, Germany, Norway, Rus-sia, the united States and the countries of the Middle East, to be recognized with an award. according to NTI co-chairmen Sam Nunn and Ted Turner, whose original contribution made NTI functioning possible, President Nazarbayev was chosen for his significant contribution to nuclear disarmament.
[See also editorial on Page a6.]
as of Jan. 1, Belarusian com-panies may participate in public procurement in Kazakhstan. Their participation is regulated by the Dec. 2010 agreement on public procurement between the Customs union member states. For Belarus and Russia, this agreement came into force on Jan. 1, 2012. Informa-tion systems ensuring the process of conducting public procurement in an electronic format have also been introduced, Belarusian infor-mation agency BElTa reported. Since Jan. 1, the national regime of conducting public procurement in the Common Economic Space will have another member in Ka-zakhstan and business from all three members of the Customs un-ion may participate in each others’ public procurement processes. all business entities of all Customs union member states will have the same rights. according to BElTa, the new status is expected to in-crease Belarus’s export potential.
Nurlan Nigmatulin, Chairman of Mazhilis (the lower chamber of Parliament) met South Korean ambassador to Kazakhstan Baik Joohyeon on Jan. 9 to discuss ways to expand bilateral ties, including in the parliamentary dimension. They emphasized the strategic character of bilateral relations and underscored the contributions of President Nazarbayev and Presi-dent Park Geon-hye to their devel-opment. according to Nigmatulin, developing inter-parliamentary ties would be beneficial for pro-ductive realisation of agreements reached by the two heads of state. During the 2012 visit of then Pres-ident of the Republic of Korea lee Myung-bak to Kazakhstan a num-ber of significant agreements had been reached, as the presidents re-viewed on-going projects and dis-cussed potential for cooperation in a wide range of spheres from in-vestments, technology, and energy to trade and culture.
On Jan. 9, the third meeting of the Kazakhstan-Iranian working group on trade and economic co-operation took place in astana. Implementing agreements reached at the previous meeting was on the agenda, as were the prospects of bilateral cooperation in the sphere of trade and economy. “The issue is the cooperation of Kazakhstan and Iran in the industrial and min-ing sectors, agriculture and the agro-industrial complex, transport and logistics and tourism and cul-ture,” Director of the Department of International Cooperation of the Ministry of Economy and Budget Planning of Kazakhstan Kairat Torebayev said. Co-chairman of the meeting representing Ka-zakhstan was Deputy Minister of Economy and Budget Planning of Kazakhstan Timur Zhaksylykov and Co-chairman representing Iran was Deputy Minister of Industry and Mines of Iran valiullah afkha-mi. as a result of the meeting, the protocol of the third working group meeting was signed.
all labour migrants will have to pay taxes amounting to over 44,000 tenge (about uS$284) per year in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan has simplified the procedure for re-ceiving permits for labour activity for foreigners. The only condition is the upfront payment of individu-al income tax, Kapital.kz reported. Foreigners arriving in Kazakhstan should apply for an individual identification number (IIN) at a taxation body in the area where they will be living. Every month, a payment should be made in the amount of two monthly calcula-tion indices (MCI), which amounts to 3,704 tenge (about uS$24). For a permit covering a whole year, the payment will be 44,448 tenge (about uS$288). These funds will go to the state budget. Employers will not have to pay taxes, but sim-ply sign employment agreements to hire foreigners. all tax pay-ments will be made by foreigners themselves. On Dec. 10, 2013, the President of Kazakhstan signed the law “On amendments to several legislative acts regarding issues of labour migration.” The document can legalise labour migrants. “The adoption of this law will also re-duce the factors allowing corrup-tion to develop, working within the framework of the law, and thus foreigners will be taken out of the shadows,” Deputy Head of the De-partment of Migration Police of almaty aidar Belgibayev noted.
nTI Report notes progress in security of Global nuclear materials, says major challenges Remain
The degelen project team from Kazakhstan, Russia, and the U.s. celebrate its completion in october 2012 on the site at the former semipalatinsk nuclear test site in eastern Kazakhstan which ensured permanent safe storage for hundreds of kilogrammes of nuclear material which remained there after several hundred underground tests.
presidents nursultan nazarbayev (c) joined U.s. president Barack obama and then Russian president dmitry medvedev at a ceremony at the seoul nuclear secu-rity summit in march 2012 to announce the completion of works to secure the former semipalatinsk nuclear Test site.
A4
Wednesday, january 15, 2014
economyeconomy
news In BRIeF
KazMunayGas national oil and gas company plans to increase production volume in the next five years.
nac Kazatomprom, through the caustic project, will contribute to the develop-ment of Kazakhstan’s scientific and technical potential.
Enterprises that are part of the In-dustrialisation Map in the Zhamb-yl region manufactured products worth 38.5 billion tenge (uS$249 million) in 2013, Primeminister.kz announced. according to the information, 29 industrial projects are currently underway in the re-gion; 19 of them are functioning at 60 percent capacity. This allowed the creation of more than 4,000 jobs. In total, 40 projects totalling 553 billion tenge (uS$3.6 billion) were part of the Industrialisation Map in Zhambyl. 178 projects re-ceived state support in the form of subsidies with interest worth 22.9 billion (uS$148 million) as part of the Business Road Map-2020 Programme. Besides, 40 projects received state support for the de-velopment of production infra-structure reaching 6.5 billion tenge (uS$42 million). Moreover, the region is drawing in investments from Russia, the Czech Republic, Japan, France, Germany and Iran.
“The volume of private invest-ments made in astana has in-creased two times over the past 15 years,” akim (Mayor) of astana Imangali Tasmagambetov said at a CCS media briefing on Dec. 27, 2013. “In total, 4.8 trillion tenge (uS$31 billion) has been invest-ed in astana’s economy since it became the capital city. about 2 trillion tenge (uS$13 billion), or 40 percent of it was public funds. The share of private investments increased from 38 percent in the 1990s to 66 percent. This had a positive impact on industrial out-put, which increased from 110 billion tenge (uS$711 million) in 2008 to 230 billion (uS$1.5 bil-lion) in 2013. Production in the SME sector increased almost two-fold and reached 1 trillion 100 bil-lion tenge (uS$7.11 billion) this year,” Tasmagambetov informed. “These facts are backed up by the internationally recognised Moody’s. according to a recent Moody’s survey, the credit rating forecast for astana was changed from stable to positive,” he added.
according to a Dec. 30, 2013 report of BNews.kz, industrial en-terprises in the North Kazakhstan region manufactured goods worth 136 billion tenge (uS$879 mil-lion) over the first 11 months of 2013. This is 104.9 percent against the levels from January – Novem-ber 2012. “The processing industry and gas, electricity and steam sup-ply and air conditioning account for the majority of the industrial output structure – 75.5 percent and 19.2 percent respectively,” acting head of the regional industrial-in-novative development department Marat Iskakov said. The actual volume index in the processing in-dustry was 105.8 percent from Jan-uary – November 2013 against the corresponding period of the previ-ous year. Production in the chemi-cal industry increased by 23.8 percent, dairy products – by 39.4 percent, wood and cork products – by 21.1 percent, light industry –25 percent and production of meat products grew by 15.3 percent. a 6.2 percent increase in the en-gineering sector was conditioned by the production of metal-cutting equipment, electronic communica-tions equipment and vehicle repair services. The engineering sector of the region has essential produc-tion and personnel potential. Its share in industrial output is 20.4 percent. Production in the engi-neering sector was 27.764 million tenge (uS$179,000) from Janu-ary – November 2013. This is 6.2 percent more compared to 2012. Four major enterprises, including Petropavlovsk Heavy Machine Building Plant, ZIKSTO, S. Kirov Plant and Munaimash operated by state-owned Kazakhstan Engi-neering make the biggest contri-butions to the production volume of the regional engineering sec-tor. “However, production in the flour-milling industry decreased by 19.4 percent, beverage produc-tion dropped by 17.5 percent, pa-per and paper products declined by 28 percent and metal products – by 29.9 percent. The index of actual volume in the water supply, sew-erage, control over collection and disposal of wastes was 98.5 per-cent of 2012 levels,” Iskakov said.
oil and Gas production set to IncreaseBy Kulpash Konyrova
It is estimated that Kazakhstan had produced 82 million tons of “black gold” in 2013.
Experts believe oil production in Kazakhstan is set to increase year on year. last year, all oil companies in the country, both domestic and foreign, produced 82 million tons of crude oil; in the future, this figure will reach 83 million tons. Growth in the production of the country’s main export staple will be achieved through geological exploration in which oil companies will invest substantial amounts.
according to the plans of the national oil and gas company Ka-zMunayGas (KMG), in the next five years, about 700 billion tenge (uS$45.3 million) will be invest-ed in exploration, almost half of which will be for the development of mineral resources in the Cas-pian Shelf. This was announced by the managing director of Samruk Kazyna, Malik Salimgereyev at an end of year press conference in astana.
“The share of the state owned company, KazMunayGas, in the total volume of oil production in Kazakhstan in the past year (82 million tons), will reach 22.6 mil-lion tons. This is slightly more than 20%, or one fifth of the total volume. The national company in-tends to produce the same volume in the next year,” Salimgereyev said.
according to him, over the next nine years, it is planned to nearly double the volume of proven re-coverable reserves of oil and gas condensate of KazMunayGas from 789 million tons to 1.4 bil-lion tons. In this regard, projected production figures will increase too. Thus, in 2022, KMG plans to produce more than 35 million tons of oil and gas condensate.
answering journalists’ ques-tions, the managing director of Samruk Kazyna also gave the fore-cast for the balance of three major projects in the country: Kashagan, Tengiz and Karachaganak. Pro-duction at the Kashagan field in 2022 is expected to reach 14,876
tons; the share of KMG Explora-tion and Production in this volume will be 2.5 million tons. More than 39 million tons is expected to be produced in the same period at the Tengiz deposit, of which nearly 8 million tons will belong to KMG EP. Karachaganak will produce 7.7 million tons with KMG’s share to-talling about 800,000 tons.
“as for the Kashagan deposit, it is too early to speak about any resumption of production. Pre-liminary reports of diagnostics of the Kashagan pipeline after a leak related shutdown are expected by mid-January 2014. Then we will be able to give more specific infor-mation,” Salimgereyev said.
according to the principle of diversification
President Nursultan Nazarbayev has repeatedly said that Kazakh-stan, as an oil-producing coun-try, strictly adheres to a policy of diversification of export routes. Judging by the results of this year, the country remains true to this principle. Despite the fact that most Kazakh oil is exported to the world market through Russia and trade has been flourishing with China, the Caucasus corridor re-mains key.
according to Salimgereyev, last year, more than 61 million tons of Kazakh oil was exported. In 2013, more than 28 million tons of this “black gold” will have been deliv-ered to the world markets through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which runs through Russia. Over 15 million tons of domestic oil was transported in 2013 along the sec-ond pipeline through Russia, the atyrau-Samara.
In total, about 11 million tons of crude oil was transported through the Kazakhstan-China pipeline to-wards China in 2013. Nearly nine million tons will be delivered to the world market through the Cau-casian corridor that runs through the Caspian Sea and then through the Trans-Caucasian republics.
“In 2013, the volume of oil
transportation by marine routes totalled 8.8 million tons, of which, 1.8 million tons was funnelled to-wards the direction of the Black Sea, an additional 1.8 million tons to the Mediterranean Sea and 2.9 million tons went from aktau to Makhachkala (Russia) and 2.3 million tons flowed from Aktau to Baku,” the managing director of Samruk Kazyna said.
The oil is carried by the NMSC Kazmortransflot fleet, which con-sists of eight tankers, two of which operate in the Black and Mediter-ranean Seas and six tankers in the Caspian Sea.
as for natural gas, Kazakhstan’s second most important export commodity, 109 billion cubic me-ters were transported.
“This corresponds to the volume of gas exported in 2012,” added Salimgereyev.
When will gasoline nirvana be reached?
In order to meet the demand for petroleum products, the country modernised three major refiner-ies. under a plan established by the government, the project should be accomplished in the next 2-3
years. In the meantime, the repub-lic has to import almost 30% of its high-octane gasoline from Russia. according to domestic producers, after modernisation, dependence will disappear.
“The volume of processed oil, including the share of KazMu-nayGas for 2013, will be 16 million tons (Atyrau Refinery, Pavlodar Petrochemical Plant and Shym-kent Refinery and Petromedia in Romania),” said Salimgereyev.
According to him, oil refining in the next year is expected to grow to 17.5 million tons thanks to the December 2013 commissioning of the aktau bitumen plant.
He added that the experts from KazMunayGas will be engaged next year in the development of a feasibility study for the construc-tion of the fourth refinery in Ka-zakhstan.
“accordingly, information about the opening of the refinery and its raw material sources will be made available in 2015,” Salimgereyev said, adding that after modernisa-tion of all three refineries, the need for a fourth plant may arise some-time after 2025.
people’s IpoKazTransOil (KTO), which is
a part of KazMunayGas, was the first launch in the “People’s IPO” programme. According to official reports, this debut was a success. The value of KazTransOil shares placed as part of the programme by December 2013 increased by 21%, exceeding 880 tenge per share.
“In July 2013, KazTransOil paid dividends for 2012 worth 28.8 bil-lion tenge (uS$186.2 million), of which, 2.9 billion ($uS18.7 million) were bought by minor-ity shareholders,” Salimgereyev stated.
However, he announced that Ka-zMunayGas does not intend to go into the securities markets in the near future.
“KazMunayGas is amongst the third tier companies (in the Peo-ple’s IPO programme), its shares can be placed after 2015. as of late, neither the government nor the Samruk Kazyna Fund have made the decision to place shares on the securities markets,” the speaker said.
Kazatomprom Becomes shareholder of caustic
By sergei Gorbunov
PavlODaR – State company NaC Kazatomprom acquired 40 percent of the ordinary shares of Caustic per President Nazarbayev’s orders on the creation of a high-grade chemical cluster in the Pav-lodar Free Economic Zone.
Several import-substituting com-panies will be organised at NaC Kazatomprom to produce caustic soda and hydrogen peroxide used in processing uranium and chlorine used in the production of rare metals and chemicals.
In addition, it is planned to estab-lish water cleaning and disinfection reagent factories that use advanced foreign technology.
“Kazakhstan’s chemical indus-try is a promising segment of the economy. The participation of NaC Kazatomprom in Caustic’s project will not only enhance the economic efficiency of Kazatomprom enter-prises and expand its product lines, but also contribute to the develop-ment of Kazakhstan’s scientific and technical potential,” Deputy Chair-man of NaC Kazatomprom Nurlan Ryspanov said.
The chairman of the board of Caustic, yerlan Orymbekov noted
that the participation of the national atomic company as a shareholder in Caustic is huge for the plant and the development of Kazakhstan’s chem-ical industry as a whole. This deal will contribute to the creation of new jobs in the region. It is also an illus-trative example of public-private partnership in the implementation of State Programme of accelerated Industrial and Innovative Develop-ment (SPaIID) in Kazakhstan.
Caustic was founded in 2002 at the Pavlodar Chemical Plant complex. In 2011, thanks to the Development Bank of Kazakhstan and Eximbank of Kazakhstan, a caustic soda produc-ing factory that uses the membrane method was opened in Pavlodar. Currently, it produces 30 thousand tons of caustic soda, 26 tons of liquid chlorine, 45 tons of hydrochloric acid and 6.6 tons of sodium hypochlorite annually. Caustic is the base enter-prise of the Pavlodar Special Eco-nomic Zone which was established by a presidential decree in 2011.
continued from page a1
The plant was launched on Dec. 8 and is currently employing about 80 percent of the total staff it will eventually need.
“We have a lot of young spe-cialists who have just finished college or other programmes this year. We hope that they will soon become real experts, who in the future will manage the plant. Two hundred eighty-six people work in the plant and 288 of them are production staff. The bulk of the workers are residents of the aktau and of the Mangistau re-gion,” Seilkhan Dzhussubekov, technical director of Caspi Bi-tum, said.
about 100 people took part in the official opening. In addition to offering congratulations, Naz-arbayev reprimanded controlling state agencies.
“Financial police, your task is to monitor employees working in state bodies. Why do you hin-der businesses? Let the tax office work with economic issues [and] the financial police with financial ones… a successful state creates all the necessary conditions for business. look at the history of any country, any computer corpo-ration. How did they start? They were small companies. I think we need to evolve this way, too. Our people of Kazakhstan should think about it,” the President said.
On Dec. 31, le yucheng, am-bassador of China to Kazakhstan, visited the plant. “Today, I am very pleased to come to the beau-tiful city of aktau on the coast of the Caspian Sea to celebrate with you the commissioning ceremony
of the aktau Bitumen Plant. The aktau Bitumen Plant could not have come into operation smooth-ly without the support and atten-tion of the Kazakh central and lo-cal governments, especially akim (Governor) alik aidarbayev, and the hard work and dedication of the construction workers of both countries. Here, please allow me to extend my great respect and warm congratulations to the governor, the Kazakh colleagues and build-ers present.”
le also noted that the economies of China and Kazakhstan are high-ly complementary and bilateral cooperation in the field of energy has yielded productive results. In recent years, the momentum of cooperation in the non-resource sector has also been continuously strengthened. In 2007, the two gov-ernments signed the Programme for Economic Cooperation in the Non-resources Sector, which has been actively implemented by both sides over recent years.
Major projects such as the aktau Bitumen Plant, the Moinak Hy-dro Power Plant and the Pavlodar Electrolytic aluminium Plant have been completed and put into opera-tion, becoming the new highlights of bilateral cooperation.
“I am convinced that through our joint efforts, cooperation in the non-resource sector between the two countries will certainly increase in scale, yield more achievements and bring more tan-gible benefits to the two countries and peoples,” le said.
at present, the relationship be-tween China and Kazakhstan is one of the most active and sig-nificant for Kazakhstan. During
his visit to astana in September 2013, Chinese President Xi Jin-ping and Nazarbayev reached a broad consensus on further deep-ening the China-Kazakhstan com-prehensive strategic partnership, which gave a new impetus to the development of bilateral relations and cooperation in all fields. In particular, the initiative of build-ing Xi’s proposed Silk Road Economic Belt received a warm response from Nazarbayev. The two heads of state both agreed on enhancing their joint work and jointly building a new Silk Road.
The ambassador expressed the hope that the products of the ak-tau plant will make an important contribution to this cause. The ak-tau plant is expected to process oil from the nearby Karazhanbas oil field as well as from other fields.
“at present, both China and Ka-zakhstan are at critical stages of national development. The new Chinese leadership proposed the initiative of realising the ‘Chinese Dream’ of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and the third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Commu-nist Party of China convened last month also set a goal of continu-ing to vigorously deepen reforms. These are highly compatible with the Kazakhstan 2050 national de-velopment strategy proposed by Nazarbayev. The enterprises of the two countries should seize this chance, actively seek opportuni-ties, courageously make pioneer-ing and innovative efforts and further intensify cooperation. let us join hands and work together to create a brighter future for our two countries,” he said.
Bitumen plant commissioned in aktau, Becomes new link Between china and Kazakhstan
A5
Wednesday, january 15, 2014
BusinessBUsIness
news In BRIeF
Business as a commodity: creating, packing, selling
By alevtina donskikh
alMaTy – Two dozen Kazakh companies that provide franchis-ing opportunities participated in the KazFranch 2013 exhibition here in December.
The event was organised with support from Baiterek National Holding, the Damu Enterpreneur-ship Development Fund and the Eurasian Franchise association. In general, franchising is the selling of a ready business; they are offered primarily by foreign companies. The current exhibi-tion presented only domestic franchises.
“Our task is to promote Kazakh businesses that create brands and pack and sell them as franchis-es,” Damu chairwoman lyazzat Ibragimova said while comment-ing on the area of business that Kazakhstan is in the process of entering.
Textiline, a participant of the Business Roadmap programme, presented itself at the exhibition. The company displayed a new collection of children’s clothing titled “legend of the Steppes”. It is promoted using its own name throughout Kazakhstan; the com-pany has already sold 15 franchis-es in the regions.
The Sunkar Medical Centre, which is also subsidized through the “Business Roadmap” pro-gramme, sold two franchises in Kazakhstan and is now preparing a deal in Russia. another interest-ing example is the Red Dragon Project. This almaty company is confidently gaining share in the domestic catering market and has already sold two franchises in the
cities of Rostov- on-Don and Kras-noyarsk.
In general, for Kazakhstan’s economy, said Ibragimova, the expertise these businesses acquire in their evolution is invaluable. This prevents those who purchase a franchise from repeating the er-rors of others and allows operators to start a new business under their partner’s well established name.
The exhibition hosted small franchises too. For example, the consulting company Roznitsa.kz has already sold retail franchises in the region. The company provided advice to Textiline. The exhibition also presented the Zhas Kemenger training company and a net of “Chekhov” cookeries.
“The purpose of the exhibition was to gather entrepreneurs who are not involved in oil and gas in one place and try to sell their business models. We also held a round table on the problems and prospects of the development of franchising. One of the main top-ics discussed was the problem of financing the purchase of franchis-es. There is a large field of activity for our fund here. I think special-ized products should be developed for these purposes. This would be relevant in terms of promoting Ka-zakhstan producers,” emphasised the chairwoman of the fund.
Franchise development issues, including protection of intellec-tual property, were discussed dur-ing the forum’s master classes, thematic presentations and brand demonstrations.
The organisers of KazFranch 2013 promised to create a roadmap for the development of the domes-tic franchising sector.
On Dec. 27, 2013 akim (Mayor) of astana Imangali Tasmagambe-tov elaborated upon the develop-ment of transportation infrastruc-ture in the city at a CCS press briefing. “Over 330 km of roads have been built and repaired in astana in the last three years. Over 20 kilometers of roads, four transport junctions, three crosso-vers and two bridges were built as part of the Small Transport Ring. Moreover, construction of a num-ber of important streets was fin-ished. Thus, in 2013, it became possible to drive along Beissekova Street from Korgalzhyn Highway to Seifullin Street and to go across the river on a new bridge. Traffic exiting onto Saryarka and Turan avenues reached 30 thousand cars per day,” Tasmagambetov added. He also commented on construc-tion of the light-rail transport sys-tem. “The expenses for construc-tion of the 21 km first line of the transport system are nearly 250 billion tenge (uS$1.62 billion), but a bus-rapid transit system of the same length will cost only 85 billion tenge (uS$549 million). The comparison speaks volumes; the difference in cost is 151 billion tenge (uS$976 million). Thus, it was decided to implement the lat-ter and complete it in 2016,” Tas-magambetov said.
The implementation of the Smart astana project was initiated in the capital city at the end of 2013 in order to prepare the city for the international specialised exhibi-tion EXPO 2017. The main pur-pose of the project is to improve the living standards and welfare of the residents of the city and to modernise astana’s infrastructure and improve its public safety and security. The Smart astana project is based on the models of European smart cities and is focused on in-terconnection in 6 areas: a smart economy, smart administration, smart life, smart mobility, smart people and smart environment. The concept of a smart city is based on the synergy of these characteristics. KPMG has begun development of the first part of design specifica-tions and estimates for the Smart astana project. Besides, taking into consideration the international practices of development of smart cities and the scale of the project, PwC consulting was also brought on to the project. The company is currently working on development of the Smart astana roadmap which outlines the target indicators of the project, smart initiatives that will be introduced within the project and the terms of its implementa-tion. Smart astana’s key concepts have already been defined. These are the comprehensive life sustain-ing systems that will ensure safety in the city and secure the moderni-sation of its transport system.
So far, three projects have been implemented in the North Ka-zakhstan region’s engineering sec-tor within the State Programme of accelerated Industrial and Innova-tive Development for 2010-2014, BNews.kz reported. “ZIKSTO im-plemented two projects in 2010. The first was a project on designing a promising grain hopper wagon model and setting up production facilities for these wagons capa-ble of producing 400 hoppers per year. Production was launched in December of 2010. Production is expected to reach full capacity in 2014. another project focused on the development of a model of spe-cialised container cars. The produc-tion of such cars was launched in July 2010.The factory is capable of producing 200 of them per year. The plant is expected to reach its maxi-mum output in 2014,” head of the regional department for industrial and innovative development Marat Iskakov said. Munaimash imple-mented a modernisation project for the mechanised production of oil and gas industry goods. The project was implemented with the support of KDB-leasing as part of the Pro-ductivity – 2020 programme. Its cost 1.497.5 billion tenge (uS$9.7 million). The factory will be capa-ble of producing 7.5 thousand kits for oil-well pumps. The regional Industrialisation Map has 31 invest-ment projects worth 38.2 billion tenge (uS$247 million).
Businessman Gives $100,000 in Grants to startups
By altair narimanov
alMaTy – Six startup compa-nies received $100,000 in grants to develop their ideas under a “Build Your Business” contest financed by a prominent Kazakh business-man and organised on the platform of a popular website.
Kenes Rakishev, a multi-mil-lionaire businessman with wide interests in mining and industry and a managing partner in Gen-esis angels, a global company in-vesting in IT startups around the world, partnered with voxPopuli.kz to launch a contest on Nov. 1, 2013 promising to pay $50,000 to the winning idea and $1,000 to five runners up. When the results of the contest were announced on Dec. 25 at a ceremony in almaty, Raki-shev surprised the runners up with grants ten times higher, giving $10,000 to each of the five compa-nies. almost 200 two-minute vid-eos were submitted for the contest presenting their owners’ ideas on how to build or expand their busi-nesses.
a team called angels won the contest for its idea of introducing GPS trackers for children under a security project geared towards al-laying parents’ concerns.
Daniyar Tenelov, one of the au-thors of the angels project, said the first $10,000-$15,000 of the prize money will be used for test-ing GPS trackers. Speaking to Ten-grinews.kz, he said five devices have already been ordered from abroad.
“These would be small GPS trackers, such as, for example, key pendants or watches,” Tenelov said, explaining that several mod-els would be tested first. “Such a device can also be sown into a child’s clothing or be worn on the wrist. Their parents’ smartphones, accordingly, would have an ap-
plication that would allow seeing where their child is at any given time. If a child changes his or her route, their parents would get a push-notification, and SMS or an email.”
If testing shows the success po-tential of the idea, the team would buy 100 more GPS trackers, priced at $50 to $100 each.
“We plan to charge a subscrip-tion fee of 1,000 tenge (uS$6.46),” Tenelov explained. “To those who cannot afford to buy trackers, we can offer renting them or paying for them in installments. For the time being, there will only be an android app, and its development will be free as we have a team
that can develop such an app. To develop one for IOS, we will hire others.”
“If we are able to do that, then if there is a suspicion that a child may have been abducted, a notification will arrive at a security company’s command center and a rapid re-action group will be dispatched,” Tenelov said, adding that coopera-tion with a security company will have to be established first.
Five others runners up in the contest included an auyl Berekesi project, proposing to produce and deliver natural products and na-tional cuisine dishes, as well as develop agricultural tourism; an iDoctor.kz project, proposing a
portal to search for medical spe-cialists and doctors; a Robo pro-ject, which seeks to build a $99 ro-bot which the buyers can assemble and upgrade on their own; a Cantra project to sew seat covers for cars; and an educational Mathematical Thinking Development Centre. at a Dec. 25, 2013 ceremony, Raki-shev added that Genesis angels will try to find an investor for iDoctor.kz, and he is ready to work with the Robo project directly himself.
Next year, Rakishev said he would seek to increase the prize money five-fold, to $500,000.
“I agreed with the atameken National Chamber of Entrepre-
neurs for them to allocate a budget of $200,000, while Genesis angels will increase its contribution up to $100,000 to $150,000,” Rakishev said at the ceremony. “I am now negotiating with famous entrepre-neurs in the country so that they too can participate in the project, as we need to expand the circle of investors. These should not be just Genesis angels and Kenes Raki-shev. Our goal is to promote young entrepreneurs.”
according to Rakishev, next year’s winner will receive $250,000 and five runners up will receive $50,000 each. He also add-ed that he wants to make the con-test annual.
Region’s most powerful Hydropower plant produces Green energy
By Vyacheslav lebedev
ZHaMByl – The most power-ful hydropower plant (9.2 MW) in the region was launched in May 2013 on the Tasotkel Res-ervoir by “a&T - Energo” and has already generated 8 million KW. That is enough electricity to supply a district like lugovs-koi with three months worth of electricity.
Since 2010, the Zhambyl region has been leading in the develop-ment of green technologies in Ka-zakhstan. Zhambyl is home to nine renewable energy resource pro-jects worth uS$390 million with
a total generating capacity of 186 MW.
Three years ago, the Merke HPP-3 was launched along the mountain riv-er Merkenka; it is the first hydro plant built since Kazakhstan declared its in-dependence from the Soviet union. In 2011, the Kordai wind farm was built with a capacity of 1.5 MW. at the end of 2012, KazEkovatt launched the first line of the Otar Solar Power Plant (504 kW) in the Kordai district, the only one in the country.
2013 was a good year for green power in Kazakhstan: in July, the Karakysta HPP, capable of pro-ducing 2.1 MW opened in the Ryskulov district; in the Zhambyl
district, the French company Fon-roche Energie SaS started build-ing a 24 MW solar power plant. With the help of Russian investors, it is planned to construct a cascade of Merke HPPs (19.8 MW).
Thanks to renewable energy, the region will be able to meet its own electric power needs in the coming years; it will also be able to share power with other regions of Kazakhstan. It is important that the cost of electricity produced by environmentally friendly alterna-tive energy sources is significantly below the usual rates. The Tasotkel HPP, for example, charges 10.89 tenge (uS$0.07) per kilowatt.
Kenes Rakishev (far right), a multi-millionaire businessman, hands over a certificate to the winning entrepreneur.
The most powerful hydropower plant in the Zhambyl region is leading in the development of green technologies in Kazakhstan.
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The IoFs will become an independent international organisation headquartered in astana, with the same diplomatic immunity as the oIc.
Food security organisation to Be set Up in astana
By yerlik ali
The Islamic Organisation for Food Security (IOFS) of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is to be established in astana.
The institution was first proposed by Kazakhstan President Nursultan Naz-arbayev in 2011 at the 38th session of the meeting of Ministers of Foreign affairs of the OIC held in astana. Implementing the initiative was one of the main priorities of astana’s OIC chairmanship from June 2011 to No-vember 2012.
The charter, name, goals and objec-tives, legal status and functioning pro-cesses of the IOFS were agreed upon at a meeting in astana on June 11-12, 2013. attending the meeting were representatives from 29 OIC member states and institutions, including the General Secretariat, SESRIC (Statisti-cal, Economics, and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Coun-tries), ICDT (Islamic Centre for De-velopment and Trade) and the IDB (Islamic Development Bank). among other international and regional in-stitutions were representatives of the ECO (Organisation for Economic Co-
operation) and the IFaD (International Fund for agricultural Development).
It was agreed that the IOFS should become an independent international organisation headquartered in astana, with the same diplomatic immunity as the OIC. It will not only identify and monitor food security in its mem-ber states, but will also implement practical policies and programmes to achieve goals and objectives con-tained in its charter.
The supreme governing body of the IOFS is a general assembly consisting of the ministers of agriculture or other representatives of the member coun-tries, which will meet once a year. The chairman of the general assembly will be a session’s host country. an execu-tive council, which will meet at least twice a year, will include representa-tives of eight members elected by the general assembly for three years: two representatives from each of the three regions (africa, asia, and arab coun-tries), the director general and a repre-sentative of Kazakhstan (as the insti-tute’s headquarters, Kazakhstan will have a permanent seat on the execu-tive council). The IOFS Secretariat, as an operational executive body, will include the director general and the staff. The director general is elected by the general assembly every four years. Funding will be generated from annual contributions from member
countries, charitable donations from other parties, collections for special projects and proceeds from products and services rendered.
The OIC is supporting the serious and purposeful actions of Kazakhstan on the implementation of proposals made by President Nazarbayev con-cerning the new food security institu-tion. Completing the process of legally establishing such an international in-stitution in such a short time, deciding on the costs of the secretariat for its first three years of work and appoint-ing a national coordinator were taken as firm steps on the part of Kazakhstan and increased OIC members’ confi-dence in astana’s implementation of the IOFS idea.
During the 40th session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in De-cember 2013 in Guinea, a signing cer-emony of the charter of the IOFS took place. Contrary to long-established practice of international harmonisa-tion of statutory documents, the for-eign ministers of a number of OIC member states expressed their unani-mous support for the initiative, having signed the organisation’s new charter during the session. astana’s initiative is a step in the consistent transforma-tion of Kazakhstan into a food hub of international importance.
The initiative was also praised by President of Guinea alpha Condé. In his welcome address to the delegates of the ministerial council, the presi-dent of Guinea noted the importance of Kazakhstan’s proposal to institu-tionalise the provision of food security and praised the contribution of Ka-zakhstan and President Nazarbayev to the global process of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
From a practical point of view, the new institution will contribute to strengthening the global position of Kazakhstan as a food producing pow-erhouse. Working within the institu-tion’s various programmes to ensure food security in OIC member states will promote the export of Kazakh grain, the use of the financial capacity of the Islamic Development Bank and other Islamic financial institutions, the development of infrastructure facili-ties (elevators, terminals, roads, etc.), the formation of regional strategic grain reserves, the geographical ex-pansion of grain exports, the creation of specialised funds, the development of new logistics routes, the participa-tion in aid programmes of various countries through uN agencies and more. It will also reduce the cost of transporting Kazakh grain.
The placement of the IOFS in astana will help our country gain experience in marketing at the international level and contribute to the development of qualified domestic specialists in inter-national relations in the agricultural sector, since Kazakh specialists will take part in the work of the secretariat and other bodies of the institution.
The IOFS will be able to place or-ders for various applied research in national institutions and academia.
The author is director of the asia cooperation department of the ministry of Foreign affairs of Ka-zakhstan.
Growing Global nuclear power Industry Requires
Tighter RegulationsEnergy security is a major issue for
most countries. Resource-rich na-tions seek stable markets, transpor-tation routes and high prices, while
importers look for secure energy supplies at affordable prices. Over the past two dec-ades, the definition of energy security has expanded to include environmental risks and electricity poverty. The unstable geopo-litical situation around major oil and gas supply markets, which led to oil shocks in the 1970s, forced developed countries, such as the united States, France, Germany and Japan, to develop nuclear plants in order to secure a stable power supply. Other nations, including Canada and the former Soviet union, joined the club, which subsequently became a group of traditional nuclear power producers.
The proliferation of nuclear power plants in China, South Korea, latin america, India and Eastern Europe created a nuclear ‘Re-naissance’. The term is no longer used after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster, which shook the industry and triggered the closure or termination of plans for numerous nuclear power plants in Japan and Europe.
Many countries, however, particularly China, India, Russia, and South Korea, confirmed their adherence to nuclear power production after implementing tough secu-rity measures. Moreover, other new players, such as the united arab Emirates, Turkey and Jordan, embarked on securing a nuclear power supply. and other nations, such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan and many others, have announced plans to join the nuclear power club. Due to this significant expan-sion of nuclear power development, demand and usage, we are witnessing not a new nuclear renaissance, but rather a widespread transition of nuclear technologies from traditional nuclear powers to newcomers. This transition is clearly reflected in changes in the nuclear fuel-cycle, as well as the sale of power plants from experienced nuclear powers to new actors.
In these conditions of rapid changes in the area of nuclear power use and the potential risks associated with it, it is necessary to review the commercial side of the nuclear industry: the front-end nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear fuel supply and demand markets, and nuclear power plant exports.
Major challenges facing the industry are the security and safety issues connected to nuclear material. and only a few govern-ments possess the enrichment facilities and know-how to properly handle the material [See story ‘NTI Report Notes Progress in Security of Global Nuclear Materials, Says Major Challenges Remain’ on Page a1]. In addition, even if a country possesses the enrichment know-how, it requires a legal framework to implement enrichment.
The world faces a timely question: how recent changes, such as the rapid transfer of sophisticated nuclear processing technolo-gies from developed countries to developing countries, might pose a threat to regional se-curity? Taking such a threat into account, the transfer of nuclear technologies may trigger irreversible damage to global stability and, therefore, requires meticulous and critical attention due to the considerable challenge it poses for global governance.
according to the World Nuclear associa-tion (WNa), the number of commercial nuclear reactors connected to the grid has remained almost the same since 2009. The absence of an increase is explained by the suspension of the commissioning of new reactors in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. By contrast, the number of reactors that are under con-struction or will be connected to the grid during the next 15 years is expected to grow dramatically. During the last five years, con-struction began on 28 new reactors, which represents a substantial number. The number of reactors to be connected to grid in the coming 15 years is even greater: 312 new fa-cilities are to be launched around the world, compared to today’s 435. In addition, non-Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries represent considerably higher growth, with China, In-dia and Russia alone accounting for 327 new reactors that are either under construction or will be constructed in the next 15 years.
The process of producing nuclear fuel is complex and impacts geopolitical affairs in numerous ways. First, each stage of the pro-duction process, generally called the front-
end of the nuclear fuel cycle, is implemented by major producers whose geographical locations are often highly dispersed. Only a few fully vertically integrated companies exist in the industry. For this reason, nuclear fuel consumers generally contract several companies engaged into different stages of production. In addition, nuclear fuel may travel tens of thousands of miles from min-ing sites through conversion, enrichment and fabrication plants to the final destination. The expanded geography of mining and nuclear power plants only exacerbates the complexity of this process.
an important trend in the mining industry is the increasing participation of foreign actors. In Canada, a country with a long history of uranium mining, local com-pany Cameco for a long time had shared the mining industry with Canada’s only foreign-based company aREva. That situ-ation changed in late 2007 when Cameco announced an agreement with the Russian company uranium Holding aRMZ (atom-redmetzoloto) to create a joint venture to explore and mine uranium in Canada.
However, the bigger story in the growing foreign participation globally is the in-creased interest of new players in the mining sectors of australia, Kazakhstan and some african countries. The Chinese companies Sinosteel and China Guangdong NPC have purchased significant shares in Australian exploration ventures. In Niger, the South Korean utility company Kepco has taken partial equity ownership of the Imouraren Mine via a partnership agreement with aREva. Starting in 2013, the South Korean group is allowed a 10 percent share of the mine’s uranium production. The partici-pation of the Chinese and South Korean companies in the mining industry reflects a trend of increased newcomer activity in the primary resources-rich markets.
an analysis of the conversion and enrich-ment states reveals a similar trend of inten-sive penetration by new players. The global number of conversion facilities is limited to several plants, including Cameco in Canada and uK, atompromenergo in Russia, areva in France, ConverDyn in the united States, CNNC in China and IPEN in Brazil.
In terms of nuclear enrichment facilities, they are even more limited in number due to the risk of proliferation and limited access to advanced technologies.
The enrichment sector is dominated by Tenex (a subsidiary of atomenergoprom), u.S.-based u.S. Enrichment Corpora-tion and urenco, and French aREva. The WNa’s projection to 2020 predicts significant enrichment growth in Russia with the introduction of new, more efficient centrifuges. In China, CNNC is develop-ing an enrichment plant in cooperation with Russia’s atomenergoprom and is expected to increase its capacity to meet domestic demand.
as to the last stage of nuclear fuel prepa-ration, unlike the previous three stages, the nuclear fuel assemblies are specifically designed to the requirements of particular types of reactors. This includes the basic shape and size of the assemblies, as well as the level of enrichment. Individual specifi-cations are also determined by national, or even regional, licensing requirements. How-ever, the market for ready nuclear fuel has become increasingly competitive, and global nuclear fuel fabrication capacity will not be in deficit in the foreseeable future.
light water reactor fuel fabrication capac-ity worldwide is represented by such com-panies as France’s areva, China’s CNNC, Kazakhstan’s ulba, Russian’s TvEl, the uSa’s Westinghouse and a few others.
In Kazakhstan, aREva provides engi-neering assistance to build fuel fabrication lines in KazatomProm’s ulba Metallurgy Plant in ust-Kamenogorsk under an agree-ment signed between areva and Kazatom-Prom in October 2010. KazatomProm owns 51% of the new company, while areva owns the remaining 49%. at the time of its crea-tion, the partners said that the new company would build a manufacturing line for nuclear fuel assemblies at KazatomProm’s ulba plant with a total capacity of 400 tons per year starting from 2014.http://www.areva.com/ajax/popins/Send.aspx?rxs=1645EN
http://www.areva.com/ajax/popins/Share.aspx?rxs=1645ENIn China, aREva has been working with the yibin fuel plant for several years. The collaboration began with
an initial technology transfer of fuel as-semblies in 1991. aREva and CNNC began in 2010 to manufacture zirconium tubes for fuel rod assemblies. In India in the summer of 2009, uranium, after fabrication into fuel at the nuclear fuel-cycle plant in Hyderabad, was loaded into the reactor and began con-tributing to the country’s electricity supply.
Nuclear power plant construction rep-resents another major part of the nuclear power industry. The current stage of industry development is characterized by an increas-ing number of plants being constructed in developing countries. These include China, India and Russia, which have experience with nuclear material either through military possession or research and development. However, there is a growing number of countries that do not have substantial experi-ence in dealing with nuclear technologies.
according to a 2009 OECD report, the governments of Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and vietnam are considering introducing nuclear power in the coming years to meet their domestic elec-tricity demand. In 2009, Thailand declared its plans to build two nuclear power plants, beginning in 2020 and 2021, in order to reduce exposure to fluctuating natural gas prices.
In addition, several countries in africa, including algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Tunisia and uganda, have expressed interest in gen-erating electricity and desalination utilities through nuclear power.
although WNa indicates that Iran has one operating and three planned and proposed plants, according to Iranian authorities, nine more power plants are approved for construction. Saudi arabia, Jordan and the united arab Emirates also plan to construct new nuclear power plants to generate elec-tricity and desalinate water.
Given the sensitivity of nuclear material, combined with the weak legal frameworks, unstable economies, tenuous political re-gimes and underdeveloped human skills of many developing nations entering the sector, the global expansion of nuclear power plants raises profound geopolitical stability and security concerns.
The International atomic Energy agency (IaEa) has established rules for countries that seek to embrace nuclear power, but have no experience in that area. The document titled “Considerations to launch a nuclear power programme” states that “it is essential that it [the country] develops a comprehen-sive strategy to assess energy needs, and un-derstand the potential role, appropriateness, viability and commitments associated with nuclear energy in the context of plans for national and socioeconomic development.” The requirements include developing legal frameworks, becoming skilled in safety and control, establishing adequate infrastruc-ture and ensuring the financial resources to maintain the safe operation of nuclear power plants and radioactive waste management.
The nuclear industry has become ex-tensively globalized, featuring complex transactions and technology transfers. The growing number of countries turning to nuclear power is a major trend that sig-nificantly impacts global governance. In particular, the world has witnessed a rapid transfer of nuclear technology to developing countries. In addition, there is a thin line be-tween nuclear commercial use and danger-ous weapon creation. During the last several decades, uranium enrichment know-how and related equipment proliferated from Europe to Pakistan and from there to Iran, libya, and North Korea.
The transition of some nuclear technolo-gies to developing countries may trigger their claims towards further nuclear sover-eignty. The world community respects na-tions’ attempts to develop the nuclear energy to meet their electricity demand and seeks to restrain from any infringement on nations’ rights to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The concern, however, is that the growth in the number of countries wishing to embrace nuclear power exceeds progress in the devel-opment of an effective regulatory frame-work within those countries and on a global level. This situation creates an urgent need to create strict global guidelines and effec-tive control systems for commercial nuclear power production and use worldwide.
A7
Wednesday, january 15, 2014
opinions
2013 Brought advancements to Kazakh oil and Gas Industry
By Kulpash Konyrova
Development of the Caspian Shelf and new geological explora-tion will dominate headlines sur-rounding the domestic oil and gas industry in the coming years.
achievements and forecasts
It is well known that the oil in-dustry provides the lion’s share of the national budget. Nevertheless, the country’s leadership intends to change this and to move the country from being a raw material source for the developed world to being one of the planet’s stronger economies. President Nursultan Nazarbayev has repeatedly said that the oil and gas industry, which should bring all other sectors of the economy to a new, higher lev-
el, is to become the engine driving this change.
In the past year, there were sev-eral important achievements in the domestic oil industry which will set the tone for the coming years. First, the long awaited start of oil production at Kashagan field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Shelf finally took place and a new shareholder, the Chinese Petrole-um Corporation CNPC entered the project. The second development is the beginning of a new major project titled “Eurasia”, which is set to double the oil potential of Kazakhstan by deepening wells in the Caspian Basin. The third initia-tive is the Government’s approval of the project for the future expan-sion of the Tengiz field, which will increase oil production there from the current 26 million to 36 million tons in the next five years.
according to experts, the era of so-called readily retrievable oil is coming to an end. Therefore, the main trends in Kazakhstan’s oil and gas sector in the near future will include: the further devel-opment of offshore fields in the Caspian Sea and the acquisition of resources found at even greater depths.
By 2030, oil production in the country, according to forecasts from the Ministry of Oil and Gas, could exceed 110 million tons, which puts Kazakhstan on the path to join the top 10 oil produc-
ing countries. Kazakhstan is cur-rently ranked 12th in the world in terms of proven recoverable oil reserves (3.9 billion tons) and 20th – in gas reserves (1.3 trillion cubic metres).
according to government and industry estimates, oil reserves are potentially 17 billion tons and for gas – 3.9 billion cubic meters. Over 20 years, oil production in Kazakhstan increased more than 4-fold, reaching 80 million tons (17th place in the world) and gas – by more than 5 times, up to 40 billion cubic meters (29th in the world). According to official data, in the last 5 years, about 20 billion dollars was invested in the oil and gas industry and over the 20 years since independence, about 60 bil-lion dollars was invested in the area. Overall, in 2013, the country produced about 82 million tons of oil and condensate, which exceed-ed 2012 levels.
“eurasia” project prospects
another important highlight of last year was the announcement of the new “Eurasia” project, which will be no less important and prof-itable than the Kashagan field. It involves the exploration of the deep horizons of the Caspian Ba-sin, both on land and at sea in both Kazakhstan and Russia. undoubt-edly, this project created serious
interest among representatives of global oil companies, experts, and bankers. Everyone understood that the implementation of this idea opens up new possibilities.
Kazakhstan’s government re-cently linked new investments and the further economic development of the country with oil explora-tion. according to Kazakhstan government experts, the resource potential of the Caspian region, especially of the Caspian Basin, is about 40 billion tons of oil equiva-lent.
Minister of Oil and Gas uzakbai Karabalin, when speaking about the “Eurasia” project, said that its implementation will double Ka-zakhstan’s hydrocarbon reserves. according to him, prospectors will have to explore deeper layers of subsoil.
“The depth of the Caspian Basin is 20-25 thousand meters and there are huge amounts of oil-generating formations there. In Soviet Ka-zakhstan, there were attempts to drill ultra-deep wells – aralsorsk and Bikzhalsk. In those years and with the technology of the time, wells reached a depth of almost 7,000 metres which was consid-ered a good success. Now, the ba-sin’s potential shows that addition-al deposits of interest can be found even deeper,” Karabalin said in October 2013.
“Eurasia” will consist of three stages. The first involves the col-
lection and processing of material from previous years. The second includes large scale studies. The latter includes drilling of a new support-parametric well – “Cas-pian-1” with a depth of about 14-15 km. The estimated cost of the three phases of the project is about uS$500 million.
The project may be implement-ed by an international consortium comprising of a number of major oil companies which have already expressed interest in it. This in-cludes companies from Kazakh-stan, Russia, Japan, South Korea and China, as well as Western firms. Future members of the con-sortium will have to jointly create a research programme and provide financing. At the same time, the project will be managed in Ka-zakhstan. The launch of “Eurasia” is scheduled for 2015. until then, a group will be established to ne-gotiate with potential project par-ticipants.
Tengiz grows steadilyIf Kashagan and “Eurasia” are
the projects of the future, the Ten-giz deposit is the present of Ka-zakhstan’s oil and gas sector. al-most one third of all crude oil in the country is produced at the field, and it is one of the “youngest” in the country. The start of produc-tion there was accompanied by similar difficulties that Kashagan
is currently facing. as we see, the Kazakh oilmen, together with spe-cialists from world oil companies, successfully overcame all prob-lems of the initial period.
The head of state stressed that the Tengiz project is one of the most striking examples of interna-tional cooperation. last year was marked by the fact that a month ago, Kazakhstan’s government and Tengizchevroil (TCO) signed a memorandum of understanding, under which the parties assumed obligations to increase production at Tengiz from the current 26 mil-lion to 38 million tons of crude oil a year.
The project of future expansion is estimated at 7-8 billion dollars. Its implementation is tentatively scheduled for 2017-2019.
“The importance of the signed memorandum of understanding is that it covers things valued by the country such as the environment and increasing the project’s local content,” Karabalin said.
according to him, domestic companies working with steel structures are involved in the Ten-giz project. Their volume is 60,000 tons per year. Consequently, the share of Kazakh content in the TCO is set to reach 44 % of total investments.
The author is a reporter and analyst with the Kazakhstans-kaya pravda newspaper.
energy cooperation between Kazakhstan and china
By Usen suleimen, phd
Energy cooperation is an impor-tant aspect of bilateral economic trade between Kazakhstan and China. China’s economy, while growing at an unprecedented pace, is nonetheless encountering acute shortages of hydrocarbons. as a consequence, the intensification of foreign energy arrangements with energy supplier-countries is be-coming increasingly important for Beijing. In this respect, Kazakh-stan, as one of the area’s major mineral resources exporters, is of particular interest to China.
Since the establishment of dip-lomatic relations in 1991, astana and Beijing have agreed to support the economic entities of the two countries by carrying out several energy cooperation projects in-cluding: (a) the construction of the Kazakhstan-China crude oil and natural gas pipelines; (b) the ex-ploitation and development of oil and natural gas; (c) the processing of oil and natural gas; and, (d) the construction of new power facili-ties and the transmission of elec-tricity to third country markets.
Concomitant with their pursuance of the large-scale oil and gas pro-jects, both sides intend to intensify efforts towards implementing im-portant projects in the field of non-raw materials, improving the in-vestment environment and actively supporting companies of the other side in investing in the respective domestic markets. also welcome will be companies in the fields of oil and gas machinery and equipment manufacturing, food, the textile in-dustry, transportation, logistic ser-vices, metallurgy, building materials and tourism. Moreover, both sides will strive to increase the rail cargo-shipping volume and to explore the possibility of constructing a new railway between Kazakhstan and China. They have further agreed to in-depth exploitation of the potential of transit transport and to promote the establishment of an international transit passage that will guarantee goods transportation in the Euro-asian region and within the borders of Kazakhstan and China.
In general, the two countries’ in-
terests coincide: the key aspects of their mutually beneficial coopera-tion are energy and hydrocarbon-resource projects. Kazakhstan, now Central asia’s energy leader, accounts for the bulk of the re-gion’s hydrocarbon resources, i.e. oil and natural gas. With its small population size and low consump-tion level, Kazakhstan is a sig-nificant net exporter of hydrocar-bons in Central asia. However, the bulk of its exports had to pass through Russian territory or Rus-sian-owned pipelines. at the same time, since the mid-1990s, China has increasingly needed more oil imports to maintain its economic growth.
The same mutual desire could be seen during the September 2013 visit to Kazakhstan by new Chinese President Xi Jinping that led to the signing of energy deals worth $30 billion, including China National Petroleum Corporation’s (CNPC) acquisition of an 8.3 per-cent stake in Kashagan, the largest oilfield in the world outside the Middle East.
Back in December 2007, the Chinese National Petroleum Com-pany pledged to invest $2.2 billion in a 1,800-kilometre, 1.06 trillion cubic feet/year natural gas pipeline that would run from Turkmeni-stan through uzbekistan and Ka-zakhstan to China. according to the construction plan, the pipeline is expected to start at Gedaim on the border of Turkmenistan and uzbekistan. approximately 520 kilometres would run through uz-bekistan and the rest through Ka-zakhstan to reach Khorgos in Chi-na’s northwestern Xinjiang region. In august 2006, Turkmenistan and China signed a 30-year sup-ply agreement for the gas that will fill the pipeline. The CNPC has set up two entities to oversee the Turkmen upstream project and the development of the second pipe-line that will cross China from the Xinjiang region to demand centers in southeast China. The total cost of the entire project is expected to be in the vicinity of $7.31 billion. also, Russia is planning a natural gas pipeline to China (Internation-al Energy agency (IEa) 2008).
as mentioned, China became a net importer of oil in 1993 when its demand for oil surpassed its supplies of oil. The net import de-pendency of oil soared from 7.5 percent in 1993 to 53.3 percent in 2011 (IEa, 2012).
The main way of importing Chi-na’s oil is by ocean tankers, which accounts for 93 percent of the to-tal. But, almost 80 percent of these oil imports pass through the Strait of Malacca, exposing China to the insecurities of overdependence on
a congested passage. So China re-alized its need to start looking for new supplies for oil. It was agreed that Russia and Central asia, par-ticularly Kazakhstan, would ac-count for an increasing share of China’s oil imports by means of oil pipelines.
according to the IEa (2007), China’s dependence on imports will rise from about 50 percent of consumption in 2007 to 80 per-cent in 2030, considering that the potential for increasing domestic oil production is small and the de-mand for oil is large and growing.
Given that most international agencies, with the exception of OPEC, have predicted that oil pro-duction will increase from 184.8 million tons in 2006 to only 189.2-199.2 million tons in 2020, the coun-try’s net import dependency is set to go north. China’s demand for natu-ral gas increased remarkably from 15,250 million cubic metres (Mcm) in 1990 to 69,523 Mcm in 2007, generating pressure on the supply side. China imported 950 million cubic metres of liquefied natural gas (LNG) for the first time in 2006: its natural gas imports are projected to increase sharply from 1,200 Mcm in 2010 to 2,800 Mcm in 2015 and 12,800 Mcm in 2030 (IEa, 2007).
Most of its imported gas will come by pipeline from neighbour-ing countries. Beijing has moot-ed several large-scale pipelines to bring supplies from abroad, among which is a 3,000-kilome-tre pipeline from Kazakhstan to Khorgos in Xinjiang, which is due to come on-stream in late 2014. This pipeline will carry gas mainly from Turkmenistan, which, as mentioned, in 2006 signed a 30-year deal with China to de-liver 3,000 Mcm of gas annually, but also from other Central asian countries. It will ultimately con-nect with China’s planned second west-to-east natural gas pipeline. Its capacity will be 1,000 Mcm per year initially and will rise to 3,000 Mcm per year by 2014.
In addition, the CNPC signed an agreement with Exxon (u.S.) and Russia’s Rosneft for an 800 Mcm capacity pipeline from Sakha-lin-1 Island to the Khabarovsk region. The latest report shows that Sakhalin-1 gas supplies to the Khabarovsk region will have reached 10 bcm by November 2013. Two other agreements were also signed between the CNPC and Russia’s Gazprom in 2006 to import gas through pipelines run-ning first via an as yet undeter-mined route from western Siberia to China’s Xinjiang, and second from eastern Siberia to Heilongji-ang Province in north-east China. These lines will have a combined
annual capacity of 3,000 Mcm per year, with delivery targeted for 2013 (Economist Intelligence unit (EIu), 2007).
Other gas imports will include liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipped in by tankers. The first lNG terminal, which was built by BP and the Chinese National Over-seas Oil Company (CNOOC) in Shenzhen, opened for business in June 2006. Initially, the $10 billion project aimed to allow the import of 450 Mcm of lNG each year from australia and up to 1,100 Mcm annually by 2008.
The Shenzhen lNG terminal is only the first of a dozen terminals planned along China’s coast. The second, which is located in Fujian province, opened in april 2008. So, now there are five LNG ter-minals planned to operate in Chi-na, including Shanghai (October 2009), Jiangsu (November 2011) and Dalian (November 2011).
Chinese decision-making re-garding the purchase of oil and gas fields has been affected by the fact that Beijing was a late-comer in the Kazakhstan market. For this reason, in the early stages, China could only acquire sites of relative-ly marginal importance (as it did in africa). Despite these negative ini-tial conditions, Beijing’s purchases are still commercially rational. It invests in fields located in the Ak-tobe region and near the Caspian Sea, areas that are situated around the energy center of Central asia. It is also involved in more isolated fields that have the advantage of being located along the path of the Kazakhstan-China pipeline.
In 1997, the CNPC acquired 60 percent of the shares of the oil company aktobemunaigaz, which is based in the aktobe region. It also acquired a 20-year user li-cense for the Zhanazhol gas site and the Kenkiyak oil site. In its own interests, and in a bid to gain favor with Kazakh authorities, the CNPC committed to investing $4 billion by 2010, of which $540 million would be made available in the first five years. In 2005, the CNPC launched its largest foreign acquisition, i.e., Petrokazakhstan (formerly Hurricane Hydrocar-bons). The CNPC outbid its Indian competitor Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) by offering the sum of $4.2 billion.
Rationales of energy cooperation between Two nations
energy Rationale. The Ka-zakhstan-China energy coopera-tion is principally based on the
simple fact that China needs to im-port energy for development and Kazakhstan needs to export energy to maintain its economic growth.
Both countries have adopted di-verse strategies for energy trade. Currently, China’s crude imports are heavily dependent on the Mid-dle East and africa, countries that are politically unstable and suffer from active terrorism and sabo-tage. In 2005, the Persian Gulf and africa accounted for 46 percent and 31 percent respectively. China would like to reduce its depend-ence on Middle East and african oil by creating alternative sources. On the other hand, for historical reasons, Kazakhstan’s oil exports have been overwhelmingly domi-nated by Russia’s network. Before the operation of the BTC, virtu-ally all of Kazakhstan’s oil exports were towards Russia, or via Rus-sia’s pipeline. Thus, selling oil to the East also meets the strategic in-terests of Kazakhstan energy trade policy.
Geopolitical Rationale. The en-ergy rationale itself is not enough to justify certain forms of energy cooperation, e.g., building trans-national pipelines, because such pipelines are expensive and un-likely to satisfy a significant pro-portion of China’s energy imports. This is also the reason why the two countries’ energy collaboration has been put on hold more than once. To understand the reasons for the two countries’ large-scale cooper-ation in the energy sector, certain geopolitical rationales need to be considered.
Broader Bilateral coopera-tion. There are three forms of en-ergy cooperation: cooperation of energy, cooperation for energy and cooperation by energy. The dimen-sion of “cooperation by energy” needs to be taken into account. While Kazakhstan and China have not been significant economic and geopolitical partners, China’s need to import Kazakhstan’s energy has opened the door for broader cooperation. For example, the Ka-zakhstan-China trade turnover in-creased substantially from $1,557 million in 2000 to $25,113 mil-lion in 2012. Moreover, bilateral economic trade was not limited to energy; China’s exports toward Kazakhstan, presumably non-en-ergy goods, grew even faster than China’s energy imports from Ka-zakhstan.
china’s western develop-ment programme (or strategy) and xinjiang’s strategic Im-portance. In order to narrow the income gap between Western and Eastern China, while at the same time living up to Deng Xiaop-ing’s promise and acknowledging
the seriousness of the situation, in 1999, then President Jiang Zemin announced the Western Develop-ment Programme which comprises six provinces (yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai), five autonomous regions (Guangxi, Ningxia, Xizang, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang), and one municipality (Chongqing).
To achieve the goals of the pro-gramme, it seemed important to create stronger economic ties be-tween Western China and Central asia. Even more importantly, eco-nomic cooperation between the Xinjiang uygur autonomous Re-gion and Central asia could help develop the local economy and, to some extent, reduce the attrac-tiveness of Xinjiang separatism. Moreover, the Kazakhstan-China energy cooperation largely match-es the economic structure and de-velopment strategy of Xinjiang. In 2000, for example, oil, gas and other extractive resources played a dominant role in the industrial sec-tor, accounting for 61 percent of Xinjiang’s GDP. It comes, then, as no surprise that the region is con-sidered the “oil tank” of China.
Symbolic Benefits. Besides “real” benefits, there are several important symbolic benefits of the cooperation. First, it serves as a platform to counterbalance the soft power of Russia and increases Beijing’s and astana’s bargaining power when it comes to negotia-tions over energy with Russia. For example, the construction of the Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline al-ready worried the Russian com-panies as they (wrongly) believed that China would not need Rus-sia’s oil and the future Sino-Russia pipeline. Second, the cooperation is a successful hallmark of the Shanghai Cooperation Organiza-tion (SCO), which encourages integration of the Central asia en-ergy sector. It has increased SCO’s ‘soft power’ and regional influence vis-a-vis the united States and its ideology. Third, completion of the Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline will substantially reinforce confidence in, and the professional images of, the two governments’ energy com-panies. The pipeline will be con-structed without technological sup-port from third parties. This will gain the trust of other countries and motivate them to consider cooper-ating with Kazakhstan and China.
The author is ambassador-at-large at the ministry of Foreign affairs of Kazakhstan. This arti-cle is written with the support of the samruk-Kazyna sovereign wealth Fund. It is printed in a shortened form here, while the full version is available online.
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Wednesday, january 15, 2014
eurasia&world
eurasian economic Union agreement to Be signed in 2014, wTo accession process Underway
By meruyert nemerbayeva
aSTaNa – Kazakhstan expects an agreement on the Eurasian Eco-nomic union (EEu) to be signed in 2014, a top official said.
“Signing the agreement on the EEu has been set for 2014. This treaty is of great importance to our country, for it is set to define Ka-zakhstan’s major foreign economic policies for many years to come,” Timur Zhaksylykov, vice minister of economy and budget planning,
told a Jan. 13 Central Communica-tions Service media briefing.
according to Zhaksylykov, the terms of the agreement are based on the codification of the existing Customs union and Eurasian Eco-nomic Space. The EEu is set to launch on Jan. 1, 2015.
among main purposes of Kazakhstan’s participation in Eurasian integration processes is to gain access to expanded consumer markets and attract investment to the manufacturing
sector of its economy, the vice minister said.
according to government data, since the launch of the Customs union, the volume of investments in Kazakhstan’s manufacturing in-dustry has grown by 88 percent, from $1.8 billion in 2009 to $3.4 billion in 2012. The total volume of foreign direct investment for the same period grew by 34 percent, from $21.4 billion to $28.3 billion.
The vice minister also an-nounced changes in the govern-
ment purchase regimes of Ka-zakhstan, Russia and Belarus. Starting from Jan. 1, Kazakhstan may participate in government procurements in Russia and Bela-rus. Cross-border public purchase participation began in 2011, when Russia and Belarus opened their public purchasing processes to each other. after implementing its assessment and preparatory work, Kazakhstan has now joined them.
The total volume of government purchases of the member countries
of the Eurasian Economic Space reached $198 billion in 2012. The volume of state purchases solely in Kazakhstan was $7.6 billion in the same period, 26 times less than the common volume of the member states.
In addition to Eurasian integra-tion, Zhaksylykov also spoke on the country’s long-awaited accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). He noted that the years-long negotiations have reached the final stage and bilateral nego-
tiations regarding goods, services, agriculture and systemic issues are almost complete. The only remain-ing hurdles are issues of tariff har-monisation and local content.
In his view, negotiations in these areas are also close to comple-tion. Zhaksylykov underscored that WTO accession will make it easier for Kazakhstan’s produc-ers to access foreign markets, due to favourable, nondiscriminatory trade and transit regimes for WTO members.
new permanent Representative of Kazakhstan presents credentials to Un secretary General
By meruert nemerbayeva
Kairat abdrakhmanov, the newly appointed Permanent Representa-tive of Kazakhstan to the united Nations, presented his credentials to uN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New york on Jan. 9.
During the meeting, the parties discussed pressing issues on the global agenda, the role of the uN in resolving international problems and Kazakhstan’s contributions to the process. Both also emphasized the productive and mutually ben-eficial character of Kazakhstan’s cooperation with the uN.
abdrakhmanov highlighted Ka-zakhstan’s readiness to continue cooperating with the uN on is-sues such as poverty elimination, strengthening the role of women, protecting women’s rights, devel-oping public-private partnerships, creating new workplaces, climate change and the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Kazakhstan is actively participat-ing in achieving the goals of sus-tainable development and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Kazakhstan was one of the first countries to report its MDG achievements to the international community. In particular, Kazakh-stan reported on poverty elimina-tion, access to primary education
and achieving gender equality in secondary education.
Nuclear non-proliferation as well as issues of energy, water, and food security are on Kazakhstan’s agenda in its campaign for a non-permanent seat on the uN Security Council in 2017-2018. The elec-tion is set for 2016.
Kazakhstan actively participates in the work of various uN bodies. Starting from 2014, the country has been a member of the uN Econom-ic and Social Council, the Commis-sion on Narcotic Drugs, the Joint uN Programme on HIv/aIDS and the uNESCO World Heritage Committee. Kazakhstan became a member of the uN in 1992. Since its accession, the country has spon-sored and co-sponsored various
resolutions related to nuclear dis-armament, addressing the conse-quences of nuclear tests, protecting the populations of environmentally vulnerable regions and the rap-prochement of cultures.
Kazakhstan has also nominated its candidacy for the post of presi-dent of the 71st session of the uN General assembly.
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was the first Asian representative to successfully head the UN Office at Geneva in 2011-2013. Byrganym aitimova, Permanent Representa-tive of Kazakhstan to the uN in New york from 2007-2013, also served as President of the Inter-national association of Permanent Representatives to the united Na-tions.
national chamber of entrepreneurs seeks protection within Integration
By aliya akhmetzhanova
aSTaNa – The idea of an eco-nomic union of Kazakhstan, Rus-sia and Belarus was first proposed by President of Kazakhstan Nur-sultan Nazarbayev, who thought the initiative would bring great benefits to the economies of inde-pendent states that once made up the Soviet union. His initiative was supported by the leaders of Russia and Belarus.
The first step towards such an association was the Customs un-ion (Cu), which eliminated ob-stacles to the free movement of goods between the three countries in mid-2010. according to of-ficial figures, since the launch of the Cu, mutual trade between the three member states has grown by almost 16 percent.
Today, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Russia are also members of a new regional association, the Common Economic Space (CES), which differs from the Cu in that it also provides for the free movement of capital, labour and services.
Kazakh vice Minister of Econ-omy and Budget Planning Timur Zhaksylykov announced on Jan. 13 that from Jan. 1 of this year, CES states may participate in each other’s public procurement pro-cesses. This means that Kazakh suppliers will compete on par with Russian and Belarusian suppliers for the chance to win public pro-curements in all three nations, and vice versa. Public procurement in the CES countries amounted to about $198 billion in 2012.
“The market of the partner-coun-tries exceeds the domestic market by 26 times, thereby providing clear potential for the development of domestic manufacturers,” Zhak-sylykov said.
For Kazakhstan, Zhaksylykov stressed, the main task in Eurasian integration is the expansion of out-let markets and opening up new opportunities. The additional free-doms of the CES, therefore, can be expected to have a huge impact on the Kazakh economy. However, in practice, there are a number of exceptions that impede the access of Kazakh goods to the markets of Russia and Belarus.
Kazakhstan’s partners in the CES are strongly protecting the in-terests of their entrepreneurs. Work is now being done to improve the
CES agreements concluded be-tween the three countries from 2007 to 2012. The three heads of state plan to sign a new agreement, the Treaty on the Eurasian Eco-nomic union, this year.
The National Chamber of En-trepreneurs of Kazakhstan (NCE), which defends the interests of domestic producers, has actively joined the discussion of the new draft agreement.
Opening a recent video confer-ence in astana organised by the NCE and attended by businessmen and producers from all regions of Kazakhstan, NCE board member Rakhim Oshakbayev stressed that the draft treaty will not be easy to review because of its scale: the lat-est version of the draft consists of 800 pages, to be discussed at work-ing meetings in the coming weeks.
In his opinion, the optimal so-lution is to have basic concepts like the institutions, structure and functions of the union fixed by an international treaty with ratifica-tion, while sectoral issues that are more subject to change and con-tain more significant details should be addressed in legal documents of narrower force.
“This position reflects our un-derstanding of the opinion of our President, expressed at the most recent meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council on Dec. 24 last year: ‘In general, I re-affirm the commitment of Kazakh-stan to the creation of a strong, yet adaptable, Economic union,’” Os-hakbayev recalled.
The draft treaty is expected to be agreed upon by this spring. at the meeting of the Supreme Eura-sian Economic Council in Minsk last fall, Nazarbayev gave March 2014 as the final date of the agree-ment, and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev instructed his subordinate structures to complete all conciliations by apr. 17, 2014.
The question now is how Ka-zakhstan will protect and support domestic producers within the CES and after its imminent acces-sion to the World Trade Organisa-tion (WTO).
Oshakbayev believes that even while strictly observing the treaty’s requirements, the government has the right to use additional tools to protect domestic businesses. He gave neighbouring China, a long-
time WTO member, as an example. “Recently, China lifted the ban
on foreign companies selling gam-ing consoles in their market. But at the same time Chinese authori-ties created a condition: produc-tion or trade of foreign consoles must be carried out through a local resident. Or take, for example, the countries of latin america, which, though WTO members, also have policies to protect their own pro-ducers. Today, the question is how to correctly use this support,” Os-hakbayev said.
according to him, subsidies could be one protection tool. To support its domestic auto industry, Russia introduced state subsidies in the amount of 100 billion rou-bles (uS$3 billion) to compensate the costs automakers have to bear in order to modernise and train personnel. In addition, Russia in-troduced a “recycling fee” for im-ported vehicles.
“Nothing is preventing us, for example, from introducing low-ered tariffs on goods we export by railway. Everyone knows that our goods are not competitive due to the remoteness of Kazakhstan from seaports,” Oshakbayev said.
according to him, it is impor-tant to satisfy the basic require-ment of the Treaty on the Eurasian Economic union, the absence of discrimination, but flexible mecha-nisms to support domestic produc-ers can and should always be used.
also problematic for Kazakh-stan are the technical regulations in the future treaty. The current technical requirements of Russia and Belarus are a serious obstacle for Kazakh goods.
according to Oshakbayev, the technical rules to be adopted with-in the framework of the Eurasian Economic Community are very cumbersome. They contain more than 60 sections, while the techni-cal regulation of the European un-ion, for example, is more compact.
“We believe our national leg-islation in the sphere of technical regulation is more perfect, because it clearly defines objectives and in-struments, especially as these rules should not create barriers to entre-preneurship,” Oshakbayev said. He urged all Kazakh entrepreneurs to participate in the discussion of the draft Treaty on the Eurasian Economic union.
Un secretary General Ban Ki-moon receives Kairat abdrakhmanov at the Un headquarters in new york.
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B7WEDNESDay, JaNuaRy 15, 2014
nation&capitalsporTs
Barys Players Join KHL Stars on Ice in Bratislava
culTure
Young Kazakh Singer Takes First Prize at Int’l Competition in Los Angeles
people
Folks Crafts Experiencing a Revival
ASTANA OPERA HOuSEJanuary 16 at 19.30 Great names: Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Mozart concert
MAxIM GORKY STATE THEATREJanuary 17 at 18.30 “Viaticum” drama January 25 at 18.00 Lonely Apple Tree Drama
NAzARBAYEv CENTREJanuary 21 at 19.00 Chamber music evening of Gaziza Zhubanova state string quartet
PALACE OF INDEPENDENCEDecember 20–February “Napoleon Bonaparte: 23 at 10.00 life and legend” exhibition
CITY PARKJanuary 19 at 11.00 World Snow Day
Things To waTch JANUARy
Folks crafts experiencing a Revival
By Rysty alibekova
The altyn Orda House of Crea-tive Design is bringing back an-cient crafts and presenting them in a new light.
Nowadays, it is hard to surprise people with anything due to the di-verse selection of goods available. Even products from leading West-ern brands such as Gucci bags, louis vuitton scarves, Chanel dresses and the likes are readily
available. To certain people, these are everyday items. However, in the modern age of globalisa-tion and technocracy, says yrza Tursynzada – the head of altyn Orda, – people tend to feel nostal-gic for their traditions and values. The term “neo-ethno-style” was coined in modern interior design; it compliments modern, hi-tech, classical, neoclassical and deco art styles amongst others.
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napoleon Bonaparte’s life showcased in astana
By Rufiya Ospanova
aSTaNa – Residents and guests of astana have the opportunity to
get acquainted with the life of French statesman, military leader and emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte
at an exhibition, which was opened on Dec. 19 in the Palace of Inde-pendence by the akim (Mayor) of
astana, Imangali Tasmagambetov. The exhibition called “Napoleon: life and legend” is special and symbolic – it is the final event of the “Season of France in Kazakh-stan”.
“astana residents and guests will get a very rare firsthand op-portunity to see it [the exhibition]. We are deeply convinced that this exhibition, which is being present-ed in one of the best showrooms in astana, will evoke great inter-est in the residents and visitors of our city. However, the most important thing is that it actually makes a great contribution to the further rapprochement of our peo-ples and adequately completes the year of France in Kazakhstan,” Tasmagambetov said while open-ing the exhibition.
The exposition is divided into nine sections: Born in ajaccio; An Officer of the Royal Army; The French Revolution; Napole-on Bonaparte, The General of the Revolution; Head of State, Peace-maker and Reformer; The Impe-rial Family; Commander; Exile and Death; and Birth of a legend. Each of these sections tells about the spirit and the times in which Napoleon lived.
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winter Fun: skating on the open IceBy Jan Furst
aSTaNa – While some dislike the fact that astana sees some of the coldest winters in the world, many others take advantage of the capital’s cold weather. One way locals spend quality cold weather leisure time is skating on the yessil River and on the Rowing Canal.
Every winter, thousands of lo-cals flock to the Yessil River and the Rowing Canal to skate on the frozen ice. Is such an open sky rink better than one indoors? That is what The astana Times tried to figure out right after the holiday season.
“Winter is no reason to stay at home,” Raen Zeker, a young en-trepreneur from astana said. “One can always dress up warmly and enjoy the winter fun.”
Zeker has been skating since childhood and it is hard for him to remember how he learned to skate. “I learned to skate long ago and it is difficult to remember whether it was hard or easy for me to learn. But nowadays, I try to go skating every now and then, at least three to five times a season,” he com-mented.
Skating outdoors in astana is not always a good idea; the tem-peratures drops below -30 at times, skating should be avoided on these days. However, any other day with a negative temperature, is a good skating day, even ones around -15 degrees centigrade. What makes people go out?
“Being active has always put
me in a good mood. Even falls on the ice (which are inevitable) are not going to spoil my time,” Ze-ker said. “We always go home in an excellent mood thinking about coming back the next weekend. There is nothing better than skat-ing in the sun, or when the wind blows and helps us glide – it is priceless.”
It might be priceless, but how safe is skating on the river in the winter? Could the ice break? These questions certainly might be of
importance to those who recently arrived in astana; any local would answer: “Of course it’s safe!”
But not right after the first snow. Later, after the first freeze below -20C, it should be safe.
“Our winter can be very cold, the ice gets several metres thick, it is impossible for it to break,” Zeker reassured.
“Off-road vehicles can race on this thick ice, I have seen it myself. actually, 15 centimetre thick ice is enough for that,” Igor lee, a regu-
lar skater and ice fishing loversaid. “I have been skating since child-hood, and it was not too hard to learn to skate, I used to roller blade quite often. Now, I go skating once every two weeks with my family; that is our tradition, sometimes, we go to alau [indoor skating rink] when it is too cold and sometimes here to yessil. Of course, if you want quality ice, alau is better, it is indoors, they take good care of the ice, here it is good for learning, it is more fun and you have more room for falling,” advised lee, smiling.
lee recommended alau Sports Complex and Kazakhstan Sports Palace on the Rowing Canal. “at alau, entry for adults is 500 tenge (uS$3.24) during the day and 1,000 tenge (uS$6.47) after four p.m. Kids up to 12 years of age pay half of that; kids younger than five enter for free, rental [skates] are also 1,000 tenge (uS$6.47), the same price as at the yessil River (and on the Rowing Canal), but there are no entrance fees at yessil or on the Canal. you can skate for free if you have your own skates so it is a bit crowded there,” he said.
Ice skating might be the next big sport for Kazakhs. So far, the world knows of young Kazakh skater Denis Ten, who is now preparing for the Sochi Olympics, which will probably be the biggest event in his life. The hockey world knows of the astana based Barys team that is wreaking havoc this season. But with this continued tradition, the world will surely hear more names from Kazakhstan very soon.
documentary series Highlights atyrau cultural Heritage
By Rem mikhailov
aTyRau – The atyrau broad-cast television branch of the Ka-zakhstan television company pre-sented the documentary, “From the Khazars to Kazakhs,” dedicated to the history of the region, on the eve of Kazakhstan’s Independence Day.
The original 10-episode docu-mentary was the result of a 30-day historical and cultural expedition taken by the Kazakhstan company and scientists from the atyrau H. Dosmukhamedov State university.
The trip was supported by the ad-ministration of the atyrau oblast.
The crew, headed by Director of the Regional Branch of Kazakh-stan Tv askar ashimov, explored Kainar, Donyztau, Karashun-gil and Imankara in the Zhylyoi district; nomad encampments in Taskeshu in the Makat district; the historic sites alpy-ana, Tukti-ata, Zholayshagyl and Korgansha in the Kyzylkogin district and the Sarayshyk settlement and the tomb of Khan Tukymy in the Makham-bet district.
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yrza Tursynzada, head of altyn orda House of creative design.
skating outdoors on the Rowing canal in astana is great fun for thousands.
major Botanical Garden complex to Be Built for expo 2017
By Gulyaim Tulesheva
aSTaNa – a State Botanical Garden with a parkland area of 97.5 hectares is one of the facili-ties to be constructed in the capital for the upcoming EXPO 2017. The garden will be a tourist attraction as well as house a botanical mu-seum and botanical research insti-tutes.
according to the astana Depart-ment of Public utilities, the garden will be located along Kabanbay
Batyr Avenue. The project’s first stage has already been approved by state examiners.
In 2013, the designers devel-oped the project’s documen-tation and feasibility study. Keremet-Invest is implementing the project, which has as its main architects Italian designer abel-lonio Pierandrea and eminent landscape architect Jean Musse. The construction project is over-seen by the corporate fund Nurly astana.
The botanical garden is intended to develop into a leading research, cultural, educational and environ-mental institution. according to experts, one of the main ideas is to construct eight large greenhouses shaped like hemispheres of differ-ent sizes and connected by cross-walks.
The indoor pavilions will have geographical and climatic condi-tions corresponding to different zones around the globe. Planned pavilions include “South african
desert,” “Tropical greenhouse,” “asian landscape,” “Mediterra-nean forest,” “Oceania” and “Gar-den of the Mother Earth.” Gardens representing different countries, including Iran, Spain, China, Ja-pan, England, France, Italy and Egypt are also planned. There will also be gardens featuring peren-nial and annual plans and stone sculptures as well as a “river” of flowers.
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Wednesday, january 15, 2014
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peopleNATIoN&CAPITAL
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For four consecutive years, the company has won the public goods award in the nationwide contest the Best Goods of Kazakhstan and its leader was awarded the Order of “Kurmet” (“Honour”) for her contributions to the revival and de-velopment of Kazakh culture and traditions.
Turning to the pastThe gallery of the altyn Orda
creative design house is a special world; it is warm, pleasing to the eyes, cosy and without exaggera-tion, luxurious. It displays intricate interior design themes and clothing and furniture crafted using national motifs. It incorporates ancient Ka-zakh folk craft techniques such as patchwork, embroidery, oyma and felt art with a modern twist. These things are complemented with Swarovski rhinestones, fringe, or-ganza, velour, beads, natural feath-ers, and even pearls, turquoise, cor-als and other decorative stones. The mix of fabrics, colours and geo-metric figures creates an inimitable style. The patchworks attract the eye with their multihued diversity.
a striking template of innova-tions, reflecting neo-ethnic-style is a hand-sewn couch, which was sewn with classic materials and fabrics. These materials include tuskiiz, mat, tekemets, yarn, ala-sha, takyr-clem, syrmak.
In the modern ethnic room, in place of curtains, a shimyldyk is offered in a variety of new styles, colours and hues, bringing back the memories of the past.
Topping it all is an exclusive collection of dowries with his-torical articles that have been forgotten for all too long includ-ing quilts and other pieces of bed-ding crafted in folk styles such as shabadan, shimyldyk, kos zhastyk, jer zhastyk, shai korpe, kuyeu kor-pe, makhabbat korpe, ak kzol, bata kilem, kuda korzhyn, korzhyn and kalta, aniana.
unique things for babies are hand-made in traditional folk style at altyn Orda too.
amid the variety of solid and attractive ethnic articles, you feel plunged into the world of child-hood and adolescence and that you are getting closer to the nation’s historical roots. The clothing al-most transmits the warmth of the crafters’ hands to you, while giving
you energy and preserving memo-ries of the past. yrza Tursynzada says that visitors, especially older ones, are grateful for the shop; foreign guests take interest in the crafts too. More than once, the shop was complimented at interna-tional exhibitions, especially while in Europe.
Risk paid offKazakhs innately respect their
elders, their traditions and national heirlooms. The Kazakh people are naturally open, hospitable, amica-ble and peace loving; they seek to live in harmony with the world and dig deep into the cultural traditions of the Great Steppe, Tursynzada said. Interest in the best traditions of folk art and the desire to revive unjustly forgotten arts and crafts has noticeably grown in recent years. This trend can be ascribed to the growth of culture in society and a more profound and objective perception of the nation’s heritage and traditional style.
While in Moscow, she bought traditional hand-made articles as gifts for her friends and acquaint-ances: a pouch, a cushion and the likes.
Tursynzada’s first steps in busi-ness came in the form of 3-4 quilts that she made together with her housekeeper; they were sold with-in a week. visitors started com-ing; they were interested in buy-ing quilts and other ethnic articles meant for special occasions and celebrations such as matchmak-ing events, weddings and births. That’s how she got the idea of run-ning her own business.
altyn Orda’s products are not only beautiful, but also carry a his-torical and aesthetic idea. They are part of Kazakh culture and nation-al memory. The in-depth meaning of tradition and how it is carried
out is painstakingly explained to visitors.
Guests are likely to remember a well preserved custom that has great educational value, rather than the expensive restaurant it took place in. It is sure to leave an unforgettable impression.
as ethnic crafts came into de-mand, yrza Tursynzada had sub-stantially invested in the new business, acquiring modern equip-ment from the Japanese, Swiss, Russians and Chinese. They use fabrics and furnishings of high quality; the young company is par-ticularly intent on using quality to carve a secure niche in the market for our goods. This is unattainable with simple machinery.
The technologies applied are the most advanced too, they include photo-printing, computer embroi-dery and working with stone. Com-bining them with hand crafting
techniques yields amazing results. altyn Orda crafters have made a quilt called the “Echo of Time,” in modern and ancient embroidery, which is a real work of art.
Tursynzada selected artisans for her enterprise from all over Ka-zakhstan. They have 35 enthusias-tic seamstresses and embroiderers, dedicated to this delicate work; they do everything painstakingly.
The head of the company be-lieves that the needlework, which develops artistic taste and skill, patience and accuracy, enriches one’s inner life and is aesthetically pleasing.
She said, “At first, people said this was a crazy idea and a risky venture, there is little money in crafts.” But she persevered and became obsessed, and rightly so, as the articles are in great demand, not only at home, but also abroad.
Quality is of the essenceQuality, according to the busi-
ness lady, is a strategic business development tool.
“High quality should be the standard for our society,” she stated. “If each of us put his heart into his/her job, we would be un-rivalled.”
according to her, quality is par-ticularly relevant now that Ka-zakhstan is in the Customs union.
“Deepening integration is an inevitable process,” Tursynzada asserted. “alone, we could be simply swept away and forgot-ten about in this fast paced world. We are bound to be in vogue, in the mainstream and to be among the 30 most advanced nations. We must learn new things and make everything with supreme quality.”
The altyn Orda is now planning to take part in EXPO 2017.
Folks crafts experiencing a Revival
Interior design themes and clothing as well as furniture crafted using national motifs produced in altyn orda creative design house.
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The exhibition features about 300 pieces, including works of art, personal belongings of the emperor and his family, papers, military attributes, manuscripts and furniture from the Napole-onic era that show the stormy creative, scientific and politi-cal life of France at that time, as well as the major changes in civil society under Napoleon’s leadership. There is a special exhibit centred around the dress which Mrs. Beranger, the wife of state councilor Jean Beranger, wore on the day of Napoleon’s coronation in 1804. It is also possible to see rare personal documents belonging to the em-peror, in particular, Napoleon’s baptismal certificate, dated July 21, 1771.
“all these things personally be-longed to Napoleon, he held them in his hands and he used them in his daily life. Napoleon was not only a legendary figure, but a com-mon person as well,” said ambas-sador Extraordinary and Plenipo-
tentiary of France to Kazakhstan Francis Etienne.
“a collection of 300 pieces was gathered from museums such as the Napoleon Foundation, ver-sailles, Fontainebleau and the Napoleon Museum, which is lo-cated at Malmaison in the house where he lived with Josephine. We are pleased that the exhibi-tion has come to astana,” said the exhibition’s curator, Director of the Napoleon Foundation, Thierry lentz.
lentz, co-curator Pierre Bran-da, scenography experts Pascal Rodriguez and Dina Baitassova were involved in organising the exhibit. Organisers divided ex-hibits by period of Napoleon’s life. There is also an excerpt from his work “Clisson and Eugenie” which was written by Bonaparte when he was young. He crafted the piece in the spirit of the En-lightenment. at that time, the fu-ture emperor dreamed of becom-ing a writer and later tried to rid himself of all of his novels and short stories.
The guillotine demonstrated at
the exhibition is symbolic of the French Revolution, which in the penal code adopted during Napole-onic rule, was the main instrument of execution.
Bonaparte’s coronation in No-tre Dame is depicted in detail by painter Jacques-louis David in 1804. The reform achievements of the emperor are reflected in the work of Jean-Baptiste and in cop-ies of the civil code, which united the nation.
legendary military victories and defeats, his exile to Saint He-lena and death on May 5, 1821 are captured in famous paintings. But before that, he managed to dictate his memoirs, which became the accepted historical narrative of the Bonaparte epoch.
The exhibition will last until Feb. 23 and is free of charge.
The exhibition was organised by the association of National Muse-ums and the Grand Palace, as well as Napoleon’s Foundation upon the initiative of the Embassy of France in Kazakhstan and with the support of the astana akimat.
napoleon Bonaparte’s life showcased in astana
young Kazakh singer Takes First prize at Internationalcompetition in los angeles
By natalia Kurpyakova
aSTaNa – Farkhad Madenov, a second-year student at the College of the Kazakh National university of arts (KazNua), won the sixth Colibri Multicultural Competition of young performers in los ange-les in November 2013.
The competition has become a prestigious international event for young performers, and per-formers from 30 countries par-ticipated in the 2013 event. last year was Kazakhstan’s first time joining the competition. at the qualifying round in los angeles, Madenov’s work was recognised as the best.
“I received an invitation at once, but I did not have the funds for the trip. I informed the organisers about this. The organisers wanted to see our country among the par-ticipants and sent a letter to the akim (Mayor) of astana asking for assistance. The akimat (city ad-ministration) paid for my trip and accommodation, for which I am very grateful,” Madenov said.
Performers in astana heard about Colibri through Guldana Zholymbetova, a former teacher at KazNua. Zholymbetova now lives in america and wants the world to know about Kazakhstan’s singers. In los angeles, she met Kazakhstan’s participants in the competition, gave them advice and spent free time with them.
“Guldana Zholymbetova was
with us at Disneyland. She’s an amazing person; she treats every-one equally, supported us, inspired us. Before the concert, I was so worried that my legs were shak-ing, and then she said, ‘Farkhad you’ve been singing since birth, you’ve won contests in Moscow, Bulgaria, Turkey. you’re an expe-rienced performer—go and sing!’” Madenov said.
Madenov performed the ro-mance of Gaziza Zhubanova Zhyr Zhazamyn; a composition by Mario lanza, “Be My love;” and the Italian song “la Spagno-la.” When he performed, he didn’t think about victory, he said, and when he heard that he took first place in the academic vocal cat-egory, he couldn’t believe it. He had to be pushed on stage for his award.
Kazakh participants were also successful in other categories: Orynbassar abuov received a special prize in the jazz vocal category and aidana ayneshova took second place among instru-mentalists. Both are also KazNua students. young aktobe pianists Zhanis Shaukembayeva and Zaru Zhazykbayeva took second and first place in their age categories.
In Kazakhstan, the participants’ family and friends as well as teacher Tamashagul Gunther and the whole department of vocal art were cheering for Madenov. Bo-lashak students who had studied in the u.S. and representatives of
the Kazakh diaspora came to the competition in West Hollywood to cheer for him. They attended concerts and listened with flags in their hands.
“It was so solemn, so touching; we felt that we were representing our country and we could not let down fans like that! a lot of young americans in the crowd also showed great interest in the Ka-zakh performers,” the singer said.
“We didn’t miss a single concert or one master class … Participants from Korea, Japan and China sur-prised us with their piano tech-nique. For the first time, I heard how Indians sing. Strong vocalists came from armenia and Russia. I was lucky enough to sing at a gala concert and perform on the same stage with virtuoso violinist Daniel Shindarev! at that moment I didn’t worry; joy beat out excitement. I went on stage after him and the maestro stayed behind the scenes to listen to me. Then we talked and the famous musician instructed me. I’ll remember these moments forever.”
That concert was dedicated to the memory of opera singer ana-toly Berkovich. Madenov sang “Shine, Shine, My Star” and said that while performing he thought about recently deceased singer ye-rmek Serkebayev.
“He was my favourite singer. Serkebayev was not my teacher, but I consider him my teacher. I listened to him a lot, tried to imi-
tate him ... Mentally, I devoted my performance to him,” Madenov said.
Members of the competition jury suggested that Madenov study at the university of California, los angeles (uCla). It costs tens of thousands of dollars per year, but the singer would be provided with a grant to cover his studies.
uCla professor Julia Ronskaya is ready to teach Madenov and is
going to visit Kazakhstan in May to learn more about the country and the vocalist. Madenov will soon have to decide whether to study at the university of arts in astana or go to los angeles.
Recently, Madenov was in-vited to the 19th Crystal Mag-nolia International Festival of young Performers, which will be held from Jan. 18-24 in las vegas. The festival is included
in the competition programme of the Cultural Olympics that are connected with the 22nd Winter Olympics and 11th Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi. Cultural Olympics participants will come from all over the world. Made-nov is now looking for sponsors. “If I get assistance, it would be a great honour for me to represent Kazakhstan and I will do my best to win,” he said.
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among the crew were experts from the Chief State Inspectorate for Protection of Cultural and His-torical Heritage Galymzhan Iska-kov and Dr. Marat Kassenov.
There are 313 cultural and histori-cal monuments in the official register of the atyrau region, but the experts say there are actually many more.
“The project has the goal of drawing the attention of the public and interested agencies to the rich historical heritage of the region, which still has many secrets,” said Deputy Oblast akim (Governor) Shyngys Mukan at the presenta-tion of the film. He added that dur-ing work in the Inder district, the expedition found the remains of a woman wearing the clothing and
decoration of the Sarmatians era. Ashimov directed the film, which was the brainchild of his deputy, Nazarbek Kosshiyev. Each episode is devoted to a separate site in need of state attention and preservation. The film is the first such project in the region and the country as a whole, and may end up being used as teaching materials for students as well as educational entertainment.
documentary series Highlights atyrau cultural Heritage
Farkhad madenov (standing) won the sixth colibri multicultural competition of young performers in los angeles.
an exhibit item of napoleon Bonaparte exhibition.
an episode from the documentary series about atyrau.
atyrau broadcast television branch representatives.
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Vladimir shepel, director of Kazakhstan’s presidental archive
Two Kazakh writers Immortalised in Bronze
By Zhubanysh Baygurinov
aKTOBE – a monument to prominent national writers Takhaui akhtanov and Kuandyk Shangyt-bayev was opened in the aktobe region on Dec. 30.
a stone for that monument to the great Kazakh playwright and his close associate poet Shangytbayev was laid in one of the squares on an aktobe street that bears his name last September during the 31st National Festival of Theatres of Kazakhstan, dedicated to the 90th anniversary of akhtanov.
The initiative to immortalise in bronze the two famous country-men was advanced by representa-tives of aktobe’s intelligentsia.
akhtanov and Shangytbayev were inseparable friends and asso-ciates. Shangytbayev is known for his lyrical poetry and translations into Kazakh of the works of Omar Khayyam, Goethe, Heine, Musa Jalil and other classics of the East and the West. He was also awarded a special diploma from the Push-kin House in Moscow and an inter-national award for the translation of “Eugene Onegin.” a lot of his poems were set into music and he is the author of plays and opera li-brettos.
The idea to honour in a single sculpture the two Kazakh national writers was supported by the Min-istry of Culture and Information. Zhenis Zhubankos from aktobe won the right to design the sculp-ture in a competition that attracted many of Kazakhstan’s famous art-ists and sculptors.
Regional authorities allocated
27 million tenge (uS$174,599) for the monument. The monument was officially unveiled during a ceremony on New year’s Eve at-tended by local officials, intellec-tuals, public figures and relatives of the writers.
Shangytbaev’s daughter Gauhar noted in her remarks at the cer-emony that the Kazakhstan Minis-try of Culture and Information had published a five-volume edition devoted to the literary heritage of her father.
almaty naturalists Take First place in International ecological competition
By natalia Valuyskaya
alMaTy – a team of young naturalists from Almaty took first place in the Rodniki (“Springs”) international competition of pro-jects on ecology and local history held in St. Petersburg in December 2013.
young naturalists from Kazakh-stan, Russia’s yakutia, Chuvashia, the Sverdlovsk region and St. Pe-tersburg took part in the competi-tion. Their projects were evaluated on relevance, practicability and
their informative and educational value.
The team of young naturalists from the almaty Education De-partment presented a project on the Semirechye region authored by the department’s Ecological Studies Club leader yelena udartseva. The project depicted how to put up a tent, navigate the region’s terrain, make a fire and cook soup. It also described the springtime needs of animals and the budding process of trees and flowers and made a plea for nature in the area to be cherished.
“We have been to many parts of Kazakhstan: Charyn Canyon, the Kulsay lakes, the Singing Dunes. [We] travelled to the Trans-Ili ala-tau. Hiking is my main method of training and education; exploring nature, people learn more about themselves,” udartseva said.
Kazakhstan’s young natural-ists were offered a varied cultural programme in St. Petersburg and visited the Hermitage, the Kunst-kamera, the Zoological Museum and the Oceanarium, among other sightseeing activities.
History of Kazakhstan archived By Vadim makhin
alMaTy – On Jan. 14, 1994, a presidential decree on the creation of Kazakhstan’s Presidental archive was signed. To celebrate the up-coming 20th anniversary of this ar-chive, we asked its director vladimir Shepel to tell more about it.
Perhaps the most unique trait of the archives is the quality of its records. It is a modern, high-tech complex. Since 1998, the archive has collected 70 files relating to political, governmental and public figures of Kazakhstan (about 8,000 records are in storage now). The archive includes files on Dzhien-bayev, Zhanybekov, Beisebayev, Ospanov, alimzhanov, Kozy-bayev, Belger, Isinaliyev and other people who worked in the govern-ment of Kazakhstan during the So-viet times.
The Presidental archive is a na-tional scientific-methodological centre that has issued over 90 man-uals. Information and a detailed newsletter are issued regularly.
In 2011, a historical exhibition series titled the “Chronicle of In-dependence” was held in astana in conjunction with Kazakhstan’s Museum of the First President, and an exhibition titled “under the flag of Independence” was done together with the Ministry of For-
eign affairs and the “Rarities of the President’s archive”. These exhibitions attracted more than 15,000 visitors, including foreign ambassadors.
“We have published 59 docu-mentary collections and refer-ences in 64 volumes,” Shepel said. Thousands of documents, previ-ously unavailable to researchers, have been made accessible. arti-cles are regularly published on po-litical history. Radio and television broadcasts, exhibitions, lectures, excursions, school field trips and open days are held on a regular basis too.
“We are cooperating with other countries’ archives and the Interna-tional Council on archives (ICa), of which Kazakhstan has been a mem-ber (in the Eurasian department) since 2003,” Shepel said. “Com-pared to 1994, funding to our ar-chive has increased 17 times, mod-ern equipment was also procured.”
In 2010, the high-tech German microfiche COM system was first applied, in 2011, new air condi-tioners were installed in the facil-ity’s storage units and then the out-dated e-filing server was replaced.
The records are held in 8 storage facilities with stationary and mod-
ern mobile shelves that reach 29 km in length. all of these spaces are equipped with automated arti-ficial climate and fire safety sys-tems.
“We introduced 16 automated accounting and information re-trieval databases. an e-reference service on Soviet Kazakhstan’s political elite from1918 to 1991 is in the making,” Shepel added.
In 2008, the frequently up-dated website www.aprk.kz was launched.
The most valuable records on post independence Kazakhstan are ones on the history of the formation and development of the nation, in-cluding a historic speech of Presi-dent Nursultan Nazarbayev on gaining sovereignty at a Supreme Council session and documents surrounding the adoption of the Constitution and the swearing in of the President on Dec. 10, 1991, confirmations from world lead-ers on their acknowledgements of Kazakhstan’s sovereignty, the uN General assembly’s resolution on Kazakhstan’s uN membership, the constitutional laws and decrees from the President “On adoption of the State Symbols of the Repub-lic of Kazakhstan”, “launch of the National Currency” and others.
all of these documents and many other valuable archival records point to the importance and com-plexity of the path Kazakhstan has blazed and to the first President’s role in the country’s progress.
waterways Reconstruction creates agricultural opportunities in the south
By lyubov dobrota
SHyMKENT – a newly com-pleted inventory of reservoirs and canals in southern Kazakhstan is helping authorities recalculate water facilities, assess their status and identify dams that badly need reconstruction and overhauling. It will also give each district an idea of its new potential for irrigated agriculture.
Regional authorities are plan-ning to use all their available land resources to provide local residents with work and stable incomes, which means making the most effi-cient use of their reservoirs and ca-nals. Mukhit Otarshiev, head of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control of South Kazakhstan, said that there are 911 canals currently registered in the oblast.
Over the past three years, the re-gion has repaired 393 canals, 205 discharges and 123 vertical drain-
age wells. The reconstruction of these waterways has allowed more than 103 hectares of unused land plots to be reclaimed and provided with sources of irrigation.
Having completed the inventory, the next step will be drawing up a detailed plan, including specified deadlines, for restoring water fa-cilities. The inventory also helped identify illegally constructed agri-cultural premises and commercial facilities. Constructions like these hamper the repair and cleaning of canals and will need to be demol-ished.
The Ramadan canal in the Sary-agash area is slated for reconstruc-tion next year.
The environmental department is concerned about the technical condition of another seven reser-voirs. almost all of them are pri-vately owned, and their owners do not consider it necessary to spend money on the maintenance of their water bodies.
couple creates smart, Underground Greenhouses
By svetlana abenova
uST-KaMENOGORSK – Hus-band and wife team Nikolai and lyudmila Zemlyany have created a garden of unique underground greenhouses in their village of ukraina, near ust-Kamenogorsk. The greenhouses, which they have been building and maintaining for the past five years, provide them with produce to sell and give local students a chance to learn garden-ing and botanical skills.
In their underground gardens, the couple grow coffee and myrtle trees, lemons, bananas, persim-mons, figs, hibiscus, bay and even ginkgo biloba. They call them “intelligent greenhouses” because they use heat pumps and are less costly to maintain in Kazakhstan’s harsh climate than the more typi-cal glass structures. Though under-ground greenhouses are uncom-mon nowadays, the couple said they have been used as far back as the times of Peter I in Russia.
The Zemlyanys began creating their underground garden as they both neared retirement age. Be-fore retiring, lyudmila had taught electrical engineering at a college in ust-Kamenogorsk, and even then managed to create blooming gardens in nearly all the offices and classrooms there. Nikolai, a qualified power engineer, has cal-culated every step of the future family business. He got the idea from the Internet, which brought him together with a former aircraft designer from Kiev. The ukrainian innovator covered the walls of his greenhouses with aluminium foil,
but Nikolai found another, more efficient way of providing insula-tion and warmth by covering the roofs of his greenhouses with car-bonate polymer, which holds ultra-violet rays in summer and infrared rays in winter. Descending into the gardens doesn’t feel like entering a cave, though additional lighting to prolong “daylight” by sodium lamps is used only from December to February. In winter, the under-ground garden saves precious heat and in the summer it feels cool and provides an escape from the hot sun. The soil temperature at the optimal depth of 2.5 metres is 12 degrees Celsius all year round, which is economical.
In general, maintaining the fam-ily’s four greenhouses, which cover an area of 1,000 square me-tres, costs 10 or even 15 times less than maintaining the more com-mon Dutch ones, depending on the harshness of the winter. This year, frosts have only just come to East Kazakhstan, which has helped them save on coal used for heat-
ing. One stoker is able to heat the stoves easily. They have also in-stalled a pump in the boiler room to pump the warm air out of it.
In addition to the stoker, the cou-ple has hired two young women from the village to help them run their garden. Their children and grandchildren also help around the greenhouses.
“My husband and I are in town only overnight, and all the rest of the time, we’re in our garden,” ly-udmila said. They enjoy spending most of their time in the village, where they have built a cottage for their children, lyudmila said. The ecology is much better, and the work is good for their grand-children, who can learn about their natural environment by directly in-teracting with it.
The village school students are frequent visitors to the Zemlyanys’ greenhouses, where they learn gar-dening and tending to plants. The vegetables, fruit and pot plants from their greenhouse are accepted by retail outlets and individuals.
lyudmila Zemlyany shows her greenhouse products.
a monument to prominent national writers Takhaui akhtanov and Kuandyk shangytbayev
aSTaNa – On the 7th of Janu-ary, together with millions of Or-thodox believers around the world, Kazakhstan’s Orthodox Christians celebrated Christmas. Representa-tives of other religions along with the country’s leaders congratulated them on this revered holiday.
“Over the centuries, this holiday has been filling the hearts of people with great feelings of love and be-nevolence, it brings peace and kind-ness to our lives,” President Nursul-tan Nazarbayev said in a message to believers and the whole nation. “These eternal spiritual values unite members of all religions. They are the foundation of development and all achievements of Kazakhstan.”
according to President Naz-arbayev, “the power of our society is resting on the grounds of peace and harmony; this is where different cul-tures and customs complement each other and create a unique, forward looking image of the country.”
“Kazakhstan is dynamically head-ing forward, strengthening social and economic development and main-taining the harmony between the vivid, distinct character of all ethnic groups and their unity. This holiday is associated with humanism and good deeds. It is important for our entire nation that has always valued the traditions of charity and mutual respect,” he said.
Historically, the Kazakh nation is
known for its hospitality and tradi-tions of tolerance. Modern day Ka-zakhstan is home to representatives of more than 100 nationalities who live in peace and harmony. a re-cent national poll showed that in the population above age 15, about 96% practice religion, whereas only 4% refused to specify or claim atheism. This is great change for a society that was under an atheist Commu-nist government for 70 years during the 20th Century. The poll further showed that 67% of the popula-tion practices Islam, 29% practices Christianity of various denomina-tions, 0.1% follows Buddhism, while 0.04% follows the teachings of Juda-ism.
acknowledging the important role of religion in unifying the nation and spreading the ideas of peace and tol-erance, the main religious holidays of the two largest religions – Islam and the Russian Orthodox Church – are designated as days off.
Erzhan Hadzhi Malgazhiuly, the Supreme Mufti of Kazakhstan also expressed respect for the Christian holiday and highlighted the ability of Christianity to facilitate the strength-ening of harmonious relations in the multi-ethnic country.
“The long-lived strong alliance between Islam and Russian Ortho-dox Christianity has played an im-portant role in growing patriotism and family values among the youth in Kazakhstan,” the Supreme Mufti said.
Kazakh language in Trial Version on Google Translate
By Rufiya Ospanova
aSTaNa – The Kazakh lan-guage is being tested as part of Google’s translation service thanks in part to the efforts of Beeline Ka-zakhstan and WikiBilim Public Fund.
Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, Chair of the Board of Trustees of WikiBilim Public Fund, said that including Kazakh in the Google translate system will be an important step in the language’s development. Ken-zhekhanuly spoke at the Central Communications Service (CCS) briefing held on Dec. 24.
“We began thinking about it about one and a half years ago. We started to think about how to add the Kazakh language to the trans-lation system. We reached out to
the Google company on this issue. Representatives of the company and the team that is engaged in developing the Google translate service said that there needed to be a lot of mirror translations from Kazakh into English and vice ver-sa in order to do this,” Kenzhek-hanuly said. Beeline Kazakhstan joined the project and together they managed to provide enough mirror translations for adding the language to the Google translate service, he said.
“Recently, Google announced that the trial version of transla-tions from English into Kazakh and vice versa was ready, which requires us—users of the Kazakh language—to evaluate the work of the service,” he said.
according to Kenzhekhanuly,
Google translate includes 80 lan-guages at the moment.
“It happens that machines make mistakes. … Nevertheless, these systems have been actively de-veloping for the last 20 years. The quality of translation in some lan-guages is quite high. … For ex-ample, in English and French lan-guages, the quality of translation is high and almost doesn’t need any revising,” he said.
“The quality of the translation is not 100 percent yet, but it is enough to understand the context and idea of any text. Moreover, these systems develop by means of our active participation. For exam-ple, if you see a mistake, you can correct it and the machine will re-member it,” he added.
He also noted that the Kazakh
language’s expected switch from the Cyrillic to the latin alphabet would not cause any problems for Kazakh Wikipedia or the new translation service. Digital tech-nologies mean texts made with one graphical system can easily be converted to the other, Kenz-hekhanuly said. “If this decision is made, both Wikipedia and texts translated via Google translate can easily be available in a new alpha-bet.”
“In such projects as Kazakh Wikipedia or Google translate, we could test the first version of trans-literation from Cyrillic into the latin alphabet,” he added.
Public Relations Manager of Social Projects of Beeline Kazakh-stan anar Zhumagulova spoke about the work involved in intro-ducing Kazakh into the Google translate service.
“First of all, we provided free access to our service. We needed a lot of people involved in this process, preferably those fluent in Kazakh and English, for expand-ing the language base. But this was in the first stage, when everyone could access it using smartphones and input texts in Kazakh or Eng-lish,” she said.
“The second stage required an assessment process for those who would like to use this service in the future and have a high quality translation. We need to understand how good the translations are,” she said.
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In her current position, Makhmutova juggles responsibili-ties including overseeing construc-tion, tracking and reporting expen-ditures, managing schedules and troubleshooting site problems. “I am multitasking,” she said.
Working abroad may be ex-otic, but it can also be dangerous, Makhmutova said. “I’ve worked on projects in Zambia, Guinea, Cam-eroon, Eritrea. Some of them were gold mines, iron ore, cobalt. We work in quite harsh conditions, liv-ing in camps, with none of the en-tertainment we are used to back at home. Normally, it’s very hot, with lots of insects. I’ve already had few spider bites and one malaria case. But I’ve learned safety measures, so it’s not a big deal any more.”
“I also worked a lot in India and China and I loved these countries; they have such a rich culture and many beautiful places,” Makhmu-tova said. “I’ve done a lot of trav-
elling for work and sometimes for days off, too. I have been to Ken-ya, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, South africa, Con-go and Botswana. I went to Kenya because I heard it has great beach-es, with sand so fine it feels like powder. I visited Masai tribe vil-lages [and] went to Kilimanjaro. I even managed to squeeze in a male beauty contest called Mr. Shamba-la in a town called ukunda, south of Mombasa. It was fun!”
She has seen some of the world’s most incredible sites, but also wit-nessed what life is like off the beaten track. “I went to a bush vil-lage. I’ve never seen a village liv-ing as a family before. If you earn some money, you buy food for the whole village: they work together and share whatever they get,” Makhmutova said.
Working so far from one’s cul-ture can present major challenges, the traveller said. “Working abroad gives me a lot of challenges. One of them is, of course, the differ-
ence in mentality and culture. The standards and corporate culture are different. Then language, technical language. To know all the things in construction and management in English is not easy. you must start thinking in English. I love working abroad because it gives me a chance to work with people from different countries, learn from them, share my experience; to be a part of mul-ticultural process and develop my professional skills as a manager.”
Companies are striving for diversity in their workplaces, Makhmutova said, and actively recruiting workers from differ-ent backgrounds. “The reason for this is that having a diverse work-force has a number of benefits to businesses, such as having more flexibility and a greater ability to remain competitive in a global market,” she explained.
Of course, Makhmutova also occasionally runs into stereotypes about Kazakhstan, as well as other nations.
“What do people in africa know of Kazakhstan? Truth be told, almost nothing. They all know Russia or the Soviet union. I am always asked: ‘Kazakhstan? Where is that? Is that in Russia?’ unfortunately, many people know about my country from the movie ‘Borat.’ They even ask: ‘Kazakhstan?! Do you know Borat?’ But there have been some changes over the [recent] years. Kazakhstan has become a respected country in the world arena and more people know about us and are willing to visit our country. We showed good results in the london Olympics in 2012. So now I don’t see amusement and surprise on people’s faces when I talk about Kazakhstan.”
She also does her part to burnish her country’s image. “I never miss an opportunity to tell people about my country. I show pictures, even random ones of streets, restaurants, shopping centres, friends and par-ties to show them that what they know about Kazakhstan is prob-ably a stereotype. On my last trip
to Western africa, I did a presenta-tion and a short movie about Ka-zakhstan and astana. With the help of my friends, I made movie about the everyday life of people, how we spend our days off, where and what we eat, what cars we drive, our traditional food … at the end of the movie, all my friends send regards to africa and my foreign colleagues. It was fun and my mul-tinational audience really enjoyed
the movie. I hope I changed their idea of Kazakhstan.”
Her home country is often on Makhmutova’s mind. “When I am away from home, I do feel a bit homesick. But I always remem-ber that I will go home soon and there is not much time to learn something new, to see places that I might not see again. That makes me appreciate and enjoy every mo-ment of my travelling.”
Kazakh expat Gains experience, advocates for Home country abroad
cancer Fund’s newest project provides mobile palliative care
By olga malakhova
alMaTy – The public fund Together against Cancer, which recently marked its five-year an-niversary, has launched a new pro-ject to create a mobile team of pal-liative care in almaty.
The fund’s newest project aims to help cancer patients end their lives in comfort and dignity. The philosophy of palliative care is to create comfort and provide opium analgesics and psychological and social help to patients in the third and fourth stages of cancer.
The palliative care team, con-sisting of a doctor, a nurse and a psychologist, will help patients at home, as most late-stage cancer patients prefer home care. Part of the funds for the project have al-ready been collected, and sponsors have paid for the purchase of spe-cialised transport.
Over the five years of its exist-ence, Together against Cancer has
held scientific forums, conducted 20 workshops, helped train dozens of physicians, purchased equip-ment and attracted investment to cancer care services, all using do-nations it collected.
Head of almaty’s Munici-
pal Health Department Zhannat Kassymdzhanov said that it is im-possible to imagine urban health-care without this nongovernmental organisation working in close con-nection with the cancer centre and the centre of palliative care.
“There are more that 17,000 people in Kazakhstan with can-cer, and our task is to unite our ef-forts for a successful fight against cancer,” said Together against Cancer Executive Director Gul-nara Kunyrova. “We attract repu-table surgeons and other special-ists to train our doctors, organise open days and mass actions with the population, promote a healthy lifestyle and run a hotline for consultations with oncologists and vaccination rooms for human papilloma virus.”
The NGO is supported by the Fund of the First President and its chief, Chair of the Majilis Com-mittee for Socio-Cultural Devel-opment Dariga Nazarbayeva. It is also supported by other public or-ganisations and companies and the citizens of almaty, among whom are well-known artists and cul-tural workers whose popularity at-tracts people’s attention to the fight against cancer.
The public fund Together Against Cancer at the celebration of its fifth anniver-sary.
Rauan Kenzhekhanuly (centre) presents news about the Kazakh language translation service in Google Translate at the Central Communications Service briefing.
epiphany day ceremony.
Ice Holes Readied for water consecration on epiphany day
By sergei Gorbunov
PavlODaR – This winter, the ice hole for Russian Orthodox Epiphany Day in Pavlodar will be made on the usolka River tribu-tary, where the water is shallow and the current gentle. Pavlodar residents are advised against swimming in areas of the big-ger Irtysh River where there are strong currents.
One ice hole each in areas of still water are to be made in the Irtysh, Kachir and Zhelezinsk districts. In the rural areas of Ekibastuz, three ice holes will be made in the ar-tificial basins of the GRES-1 and GRES-2 power plants and on the lake near the local horse farm.
a font will be installed at an-nunciation Cathedral in Pavlodar on Orthodox Epiphany Day to take consecrated water from.
Raushan makhmutova likes travelling around the world.
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The famous 100-year-old st. ascension cathedral in almaty.
almaty makes Travel Guide’s list of Top 10 cities to Visit in 2014
By ardaq mamayev
alMaTy – This sprawling city of 1.5 million people located in the picturesque foothills of the Tien Shan Mountains of south-eastern Kazakhstan has been named one of the Top 10 cities to visit in 2014 by a popular British travel guide.
Rough Guides, a london-based agency that advises travellers on places of interest and best-value destinations, listed almaty at number seven of its Top 10 list, which also includes Rio de Ja-
neiro, Sarajevo, liverpool, umea (Sweden), lviv (ukraine), Mar-seille, Rotterdam, Glasgow and Portland (uS).
“It’s no longer the capital (that title went to astana in 1997) but almaty remains Kazakh-stan’s most alluring city,” Rough Guides, which has been in exist-ence since 1982, said in its en-try for almaty. “Its setting along the old Silk Road, with rippling mountains all around, is as ex-otic as they come. add this to the recent economic boom, which has seen luxury brands pumping
millions into new developments, and Borat-style stereotypes disin-tegrate completely. almaty tried (and failed) to win the 2014 Win-ter Olympics, but the nearby ski resorts are still ripe for explora-tion.”
From 1929 to 1997, almaty was the capital of Kazakhstan, both during the Soviet era and through the early years of the country’s independence. It has retained its status as Kazakhstan’s largest city and its financial centre. Almaty also has major tourism potential, with its Shymbulak mountain ski
resort and the famous Medeo skat-ing rink located at 1,700 metres above sea level. There are plans to develop the city’s tourism poten-tial further, including through the construction of another ski resort called Kok Zhailau.
“already today the Shymbu-lak complex allows thousands of people to pursue a healthy way of living. The project of a new ski resort is important for our entire country,” President Nur-sultan Nazarbayev said on Jan. 1 as he inspected models for facili-ties to be built in almaty for the
Winter universiade in 2017 and the planned Kok Zhailau resort. “The development of tourism in almaty and in the region around it will create around 100,000 jobs. The city’s dynamic devel-opment depends on the rational use of our mountains. In many European countries, people learn winter sports from childhood. a tourist visiting a ski resort brings six times more revenue than tour-ists visiting warm countries and beaches. and if we are to develop our tourism industry in this direc-tion, we will create thousands of
new jobs [and] attract huge in-vestments, including for protect-ing the environment. Not only Sh-ymbulak, but other places in the region will be used, while nature will be safeguarded.”
along with astana, almaty hosted the asian Winter Games in 2011. It is now bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.
The link to Rough Guides’ list of Top 10 cities to visit this year is available online and can be found here: http://www.rough-guides.com/best-places/2014/top-10-cities
new TV channel on Travelling and active lifestyles to Be launched
By meruert Kabdenova
aSTaNa – Kazakhstan’s Tv viewers will see the launch of a brand-new Tv channel, Turan Tv, on Feb. 1.
Kazakhstan’s first TV channel dedicated specifically to promoting domestic tourism, travel, active lifestyles, recreation, sports, history and the culture of the country will be broadcast in a test mode with the support of the Tourism Industry Committee of the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies.
Initially, Kazakhstan cable providers, including alma Tv, ID Tv and Otau Tv, will have broadcast rights throughout the country. Within the next two months, Turan Tv will also be available via satellite.
according to the press service of the Tourism Industry Committee, as a high-definition channel, Turan TV will be broadcast in a 16:9 ratio and a 720p format with two parallel stereo and audio paths in the Kazakh and Rus-sian languages.
as Chairman of the Tourism Industry Committee Marat Igaliyev noted, the Tv channel’s main objective is to encourage Kazakhstan’s domestic tourism.
“Promoting local tourism is now of particular interest as we approach the launch of EXPO 2017 in astana. Ka-zakhstan’s first travel channel will also be available on-line, so Internet surfers may watch the Tv programmes at any convenient time and anywhere in the world,” Ig-aliyev said.
He also added that in the very near future the Tv chan-nel will launch its website, www.turan.tv. Moreover, users of the social networks Facebook, vkontakte and youTube will have access to monthly news, photos and videos about nature and tourism in Kazakhstan.
The head of Turan Tv, Roman Botabekov, who is also president of the Sport Fishing Federation of Kazakhstan, said, “The content of the Tv channel will be of general interest, as it covers many entertaining topics such as travelling, hunting and fishing as well as tourist and cul-tural attractions in Kazakhstan, including the most beau-tiful places, the most delicious dishes, the most unusual rituals, celebrations of different nationalities and myster-ies of history. In pursuit of wonderful discoveries, the authors of the travel channel will reach the most charm-ing and secluded corners of Kazakhstan.”
Eighty percent of the broadcast of Turan Tv will be its own production; 20 percent will be documentary and feature films.
Wednesday, january 15, 2014
continued from page a1
“It is a pity and it hurts,” aidyn Rakhimbayev, pilot of the fastest Kazakh crew in this year’s race, commented on his Facebook page about the incident. “Each year doz-ens of cars burn and wreck during Dakar. We just didn’t expect it to happen to our team.”
Rakhimbayev’s crew with vladimir Demyanenko as his co-pilot, also in a Toyota, were in 13th position as of of Jan. 14. The crew’s best finish so far was on day four when they started the day in 21st position and finished the day in 10th place.
“We could not even believe it when the result it was announced. ... [We] broke out in a sweat,” Rakhimbayev commented on his Facebook page. another Kazakh crew made up of Denis Berezovs-kiy and Ignat Falkov in a Nissan were in 40th position as of Jan. 11.
Rakhimbayev went on to de-scribe what it feels like to be in the race. “Both the speed and drivers
are crazy. When your helmet hits the roof or body of the car, your head doesn’t only hurt, it rings in-side like after boxing. … Dakar is [like] the Olympics of motorsport.”
In nine days of the race, partici-pants covered 6,263 kilometres, which is about two thirds of the way. Out of 150 teams that started the race, only half is still in the race. The race is also gruelling
not only for vehicles, but also for crews who typically get to sleep a few hours every night before early morning starts.
Writing on his Facebook ac-count, Rakhimbayev said the race has moved from argentina’s high mountains to Chile and that he expects the race to be different now with next three stages heavily dominated by sands.
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Barys fans in Bratislava.Talgat Zhailauov attacks during the all-star match.
aidyn Rakhimbayev, pilot of the fastest Kazakh crew, enjoys the company of argentine fans.
design on olympics athletes’ clothing.
sporTs
Barys Beats Rival ak Bars 2:1By Jan Furst
Barys beat their rival, ak Bars on their opponent’s home ice with a score of 2:1 after a very tense three periods. The team now only stands one point behind ak Bars in the rankings.
For the astana based Barys team, every game against the Kazan, Rus-sia based ak Bars is a big event. The names of the two teams have almost the same meaning, Barys is a Kazakh white mountain leopard, the ak Bars is the same leopard but the Tartar team emphasised “white” by adding “ak” in front, secondly the team logos resemble each other.
However, they are completely dif-ferent teams on the sheets. ak Bars is a well funded Continental Hockey league (KHl) team that has seen many victories big and small in its nearly 60 year history; it has taken the Gagarin Cup (the equivalent of the Stanley Cup) twice out of the
five seasons played since the KHL was established in 2008. In the 2008 and 2009 seasons, it was a Euro-pean Champions Cup 2007 winner and has taken many other trophies. Barys can’t boast having won any of these trophies, so far.
another factor fueling the rivalry between ak Bars and Barys is that in the first three KHL seasons, Ak Bars knocked Barys out in the first play-off rounds without losing a single game and so far, Barys hasn’t gone further than the first playoff knock out round in the post season.
The two teams have faced each other two dozen times in the KHl since 2008; Barys beat ak Bars only at their 13th faceoff in 2010, they then lost five more games to Ak Bars. Barys only won four games against the Russian team, including the most recent game.
But that is in the past. Today, Bar-ys is a different team, with a differ-ent game plan; it has demonstrated
just that in its latest game against ak Bars.
Mikhail Rakhmanov scored the first goal to give Barys an early ad-vantage in the first period, his sixth of the season, but the home team did not need more than 10 minutes to catch up. After the first exchange of goals, both teams played a tight point game, which is good for Barys, a team that should avoid high score games against ak Bars (last game they lost to ak Bars 0:5) which they managed to do.
In the second period, a goal by former NHl star Nik antropov put Kazan’s team in an inconvenient situation; they tried to even up the score but failed to do so. The Ka-zakh team also had the chance to score in two power plays but also failed. Barys successfully defended the lead and now is behind ak Bars in the Western Conference rank-ings by only one point with a total of 85.
Kazakhstan’s olympians Receive national athletic wear
By Yuri Lifintsev
alMaTy – Kazakhstan’s Sochi Winter Olympics athletes were given their first look at the team’s Olympic gear on New year’s Eve, when performance athletic wear sets were presented to the public at almaty’s Baluan Sholak Sports Palace.
Deputy Chairman of the agency for Sports and Physical Education Ilsiyar Kanagatov and Director of the KazSPO-N company, known for its Zibroo brand, yelena Svech-nikova said the athletic wear sets included 26 items of clothing rang-ing from socks and thermal wear to caps and sunglasses. Kazakh skiers, skaters, biathletes and representa-tives of other sports will receive interchangeable sportswear sets, designed for the temperatures under which they’ll practice and perform, worth $2,400.
“The clothes are very beautiful, made in the traditional colours of our country,” Svechnikova said. “under the contract our factory sews 120 sets of Olympic cloth-ing.”
The design uses various motifs from petroglyphs and other histori-cal and architectural monuments found throughout Kazakhstan, which, according to Svechnikova, should both promote the country’s cultural richness and help athletes win. She also thinks the designs can have commercial success within the country and abroad.
“In October 2013, representatives came to almaty from Switzerland. When they saw the embroidery de-sign with the elements of ancient ornaments, they said they wanted to sell these jackets in France. Now we are developing a collection of clothes decorated with petroglyphs especially for the European mar-ket,” Svechnikova said.
Kazakh astana dakar Team chases adventure in south america
Barys players Join KHl stars on Ice in Bratislava
By Ilyas omarov
BRaTISlava – The Continental Hockey league’s (KHl) Western Conference won the league’s all-Star game for the first time in six years, defeating the Eastern Confer-ence 18-16 in Bratislava, Slovakia, on Jan. 11 in front of 10,000 fans.
The all-Star game, which is more of an ice show than a match, fea-tured astana Barys stars Brandon Bochenski and Talgat Zhailauov, who contributed 5 points (goals plus assists) between them to the Eastern Conference effort. little
attention was paid to defence dur-ing the match, with players on both sides instead endeavouring to score as many goals as possible.
all-Star players, including the Barys stars, took part in different skill competitions before the match. Zhailauov won one of the skill com-petitions on speed and puck handling with his teammates. He also had one goal and one assist in the match. af-ter the match, Zhailauov confessed to being nervous about playing in his first All-Star match, but felt that his hands and feet hadn’t let him down.
Bochenski thanked the fans for voting for him to be part of the all Star team.
“This feeling is hard to express, when fans give their votes to you among dozens of other excellent players,” he said.
Bochenski also underscored that he wasn’t the only Barys player in Bratislava.
“This was an amazing, fun day [and] a great game, where for the first time in four years, Talgat Zhailauov and I, we both got to play in one line, were voted to play
the all-Star game and even scored a couple of goals,” he said.
Bochenski, as usual, finished the game with two goals and now has five goals in the two All-Star games he has participated in.
“We just enjoyed this hockey night celebration together with the fans that were there and those who watched the game from a long dis-tance,” he said.
Barys players have played in the all-Star game before, but this was the first time a Kazakh citizen took part in the famous match.
a press conference was held pri-or to the match, where KHl presi-dent alexander Medvedev told the media that the all-Star game might come to astana.
“a new 10,000-seat arena is un-der construction in astana. as far as I know, it is due to be finished by the 2015-2016 season. and it is highly likely we will hold the all-Star game in the capital of Kazakh-stan in the 2016-2017 season. The government has already bid to host it,” he said.
Barys fans at the match were few
but united and mostly included the staff of Kazakhstan’s diplomatic missions in Bratislava, vienna and Prague.
Prior to the match, the Embassy of Kazakhstan in the Czech Repub-lic and Slovakia printed a special brochure, “Barys on Ice in Bratis-lava,” in Slovak, English and Rus-sian. The publication detailed the development of hockey in Kazakh-stan and told stories of the exploits of Bochenski and Zhailauov and other Barys players voted to play in all-Star games in different years.
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mayor Reports on astana’s Growth, challenges in 2013
By meruert nemerbayeva
aSTaNa – akim (Mayor) Imangali Tasmagambetov pre-sented a report on the capital’s development at a Central Com-munications Service (CCS) briefing at the end of December, describing the city’s develop-ment and its challenges in deal-ing with a population that is growing more quickly than an-ticipated.
according to the mayor, asta-na’s achievements are substantial. The city’s gross regional product (GRP) grew by 7 percent last year, and astana now accounts for 9.4 percent of Kazakhstan’s gross do-mestic product (GDP).
The GRP increase in 2013 con-tinues the city’s decade-long trend of stable growth. In 2002, astana’s GRP value was about 231 billion tenge (about uS$1.5 billion at cur-rent exchange rate). after grow-ing gradually from 2003-2006, GRP approached 1 trillion tenge (uS$6.47 billion). Since then, ac-
cording to the Statistics agency of Kazakhstan, astana’s GRP has more than doubled and surged to about 2.5 trillion tenge (uS$16.18 billion) by the end of 2012.
The growth in 2013 was mainly attributed to developments in the machinery and metallurgy sec-tors, where production increased by 40 percent and 46 percent re-spectively. In 2013, the implemen-tation of the State Programme of Industrial and Innovative Devel-opment (SPaIID) resulted in the launch of 19 new projects with a total value of more than 87 billion tenge (uS$563 million). This was double the number of projects of the previous year and a 20 percent increase in project value.
as key milestones are passed, the capital is shifting its attention to new priorities, Tasmagambetov said. along with continued infra-structure development, the city is implementing a number of invest-ment projects in the energy sec-tor. Its existing two power stations are being modernised and another
power station is under construction. Housing construction is also see-
ing high growth. “annually, we com-mission more than 1 million square metres of new housing. In 2013, 1.1-1.2 million square metres of housing were to be commissioned. In total, 12 million square metres of housing were built and put into service over the period of astana’s development,” the mayor reported.
With strong economic growth comes a strengthening of the city’s tax administration. according to Tasmagambetov, these efforts are to result in better budget revenue fulfilment, which will make Astana a net donor to the national budget in 2015, rather than a recipient of state budget resources.
astana’s dynamic development seems to be making it an increas-ingly attractive place to live. The mayor noted that “more than 50,000 people arrive in the capi-tal every year. For example, since the beginning of [2013], public service centres registered 101,283 people who arrived from other re-
gions of the country, while only 22,747 people left the city. This means that more than 78,000 new people settled in astana.”
Overall, the city’s population has grown from 280,000 when the capital was relocated in 1997 to 800,000 at
the end of last year. The growth is due both to migration and a high birth rate.
This growing young population will require the construction of new kindergartens, schools and clinics. The mayor reported that now, about 60 percent of children under six
years of age don’t attend preschool, and there are long waiting lists for spots in kindergartens. In 2014, the city plans to commission 17 more preschool institutions. By 2020, the administration plans to commission 100 preschool institutions.
continued from page B1
One of the main concepts of the botani-cal garden is to create a para-dise that also saves energy, so the com-plex will be
equipped with the latest tech-nology. Smart facades will help regulate the indoor climate to sig-nificantly reduce energy costs and smart trees will accumulate solar energy, which will then be used for lighting at night.
The authors of the project want to make the garden not just a dem-onstration of plants, but a unique natural recreational complex where the natural environment
is in harmony with architectural structures. Restaurants, outdoor cafes and retail outlets are planned to be housed within the complex as well.
At present, the first phase of con-
struction is underway. The asta-nazelenstroy company has already planted more than 1,000 trees on the territory of the future garden and performed other landscape work.
sixth winter charity masquerade Raises more Than 13 million Tenge
By Rufiya Ospanova
aSTaNa – The Sixth Winter Charity Masquerade Ball, one of the capital city’s most prestigious annual events, held Dec. 7, 2013 in astana, raised more than 13 million tenge for children in local orphanages and local families in need.
Over the past five years, the Winter Charity Ball has contrib-uted more than $120,000 to lo-cal orphanages. In 2014, a record 13,031,000 tenge (uS$84,616) will be spent on educational pro-grammes for orphans and children from families in need.
Since 2012, the Winter Char-ity Ball has been held in coopera-tion with the Bolashak Charitable Foundation. The $82,733 raised at the Fifth Winter Charity Ball went to help children connected with the SOS Children’s village astana. The money helped eight orphans enter local universities and col-leges. Part of the proceeds were also used to repair two orphanage buildings and purchase equipment for children with special needs from the Children’s Psycho-Neu-rological Medical and Social Insti-tution of astana.
“The Sixth Winter Charity Mas-querade Ball 2013 has been our most successful event. The re-sponse has been remarkable. The turnout for this evening speaks for itself and we are honoured to host this event at Radisson Hotel asta-na. It’s important that we keep
working on fundraising initiatives. It is not the easiest task, but it is more than worth it. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to each and every one of you for contributions and special thanks to our sponsors for providing the nec-essary support to make this event possible,” said Fedor Filimonov, general manager of Radisson Ho-tel astana and Park Inn by Radis-son astana.
The event opened with remarks by Radisson Hotel astana parent company Incom astana llC Di-rector General Erik Zhussupov, Bolashak association Chairman Bauyrzhan Baibek and altyn Ky-ran International Charitable Foun-dation CEO Islambek Salzhanov.
The event welcomed a group of young debutantes and cavaliers who had the honour of presenting Polonaise, Irish ceili, viennese, Spanish, Scottish waltzes and rag-time. The participants auditioned months before the ball and spent weeks learning traditional vien-nese waltzes.
The opening ceremony was fol-lowed by a performance by inter-national pop star and classical mu-sic crossover singer arina Domski, who performed music from the world-famous “The Phantom of the Opera.” The event also includ-ed a performance by latvian clas-sical accordionist Kseniya Sidoro-va and young members of the SOS Children’s village astana, who sang Christmas carols.
The ball also included a raffle presided over by master of cer-emonies aigul Mukei that offered the chance to win a selection of jewelry from Chantecler Jewel-lery House and Pasha Fine Jew-ellery& Watch Salon,” as well as valuable prizes from some of the capital’s best beauty salons, such as Toni&Guy, Sisters and Escada fashion store.
In addition to the raffle, an auc-tion of contemporary Kazakh art was held with paintings by fa-mous Kazakh artists, such as uliya Moldagali, leyla Mahat and Nel-ly Bube. Famous Kazakh writer Bakhyt Kairbekov also presented one of his books for auction.
Sponsors of the event were al-tyn Kyran International Charitable Foundation, Kazkommertsbank, Poligrafiya Naira, the Nur Otan political party, as well as volun-teers of Best for Kids Social Fund and Oasis of astana.
The auction was sponsored by Kulanshi Contemporary art Cen-tre and the raffle was sponsored by Pasha Fine Jewellery and Watch Salon, Chantecler Jewellery House, Chekhov restaurant, Sisters beauty salon, and Toni&Guy beau-ty salon, Escada Fashion Store.
The event was jointly organized for the second time by a division of The Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, Radisson Hotel astana as part of its Responsible Business Pro-gramme and the Bolashak Charita-ble Foundation.
major Botanical Garden complex to Be Built for expo 2017
Imangali Tasmagambetov at the CCS briefing reports on Astana’s development.
participants of the charity Ball at Radisson.
Future design of the expo city including the botanical garden.
