As a highly globally integrated, resource-rich, upper-middle income country, Kazakhstan has been facing significant challenges in the current global environment. Kazakhstan’s major challenges include managing its public finances to preserve fiscal stability and generating broad-based economic growth.
Kazakh authorities arrested six prominent people tied to a scandal involving the alleged intent to embezzle $1 million from state coffers, according to EurasiaNet. The arrests include an important media head, and critics charge that the government is suppressing free speech and freedom of the press. Kazakhstan’s economy has suffered in part from rampant corruption and inept management.
Similar to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Europe and Asia have a free trade agreement of its own as part of its Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Kazakhstan has become the latest member of this treaty, having ratified the agreement between the Eurasian Economic Union’s (EAEU) member states and Vietnam on Wednesday.
Cracks in the fledging Eurasian Economic Union were on clear display in Astana on March 20 as the leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus met to discuss the regional economic slump.
Nursultan Nazarbayev, the host president, made a point of affirming Kazakhstan’s support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity – a statement guaranteed to raise the Kremlin’s hackles. Vladimir Putin responded with a call for an EEU currency union, something that is anathema to both Nazarbayev and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.
On 14 December 2014, the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Astana for the 13th meeting of the Council of Heads of Government of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The premier’s visit signified a new stage in Kazakh–Chinese economic relations. Li announced a new package of economic deals, totalling US$14 billion. Kazakhstan and China also agreed to establish joint enterprises in the manufacturing and other key industrial sectors.
February can be a spooky month for anyone with a pocketful of tenge. Kazakhstan’s embattled currency has been devalued twice in the last six years, both times in February. With plenty of indications the tenge is overvalued again, would-be investors are putting decisions on ice, distressed banks are reluctant to issue credit, and private citizens are hoarding dollars.
In 2011, Kazakhstan’s oil exports ran at 1.74 million barrels per day. The total value of the nation’s oil exports have also risen by 112 times in the last 20 years, with the nation now exporting over $54.086 billion worth of oil in this year. But despite being one of the world’s rising oil exporters, Kazakhstan has also begun diversifying its energy exports to nuclear resources as well, with the nation now becoming the world’s largest producer of mined uranium.
