Kazakhstan Featurees - The Times Of Central Asia

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AMM 2026

U.S. Investors Show Growing Interest in Kazakhstan’s Mining Sector

U.S. investors are showing growing interest in Kazakhstan’s critical minerals sector, with attention increasingly focused not only on extraction but also on processing, metallurgy and broader supply-chain development, according to Nicole Rodgers, president of the U.S.-based Alliance for Mineral Security, an industry group representing companies involved in mining, processing and the use of strategic minerals. Rodgers spoke during the panel session “Investment Climate in Mining and Metallurgy” at the Astana Mining & Metallurgy Congress, AMM 2026, where she emphasized that predictability and regulatory consistency are among the most important conditions for attracting global capital. “In our view, Kazakhstan is moving in the right direction, including by harmonizing regulations with international standards, developing early-stage geological exploration, building industrial clusters and moving toward more sophisticated investment structures,” Rodgers said. “At the same time, American investors are interested not only in extraction, but in participating across the entire value chain.” She pointed to an agreement between U.S.-based Cove Capital and Kazakhstan’s national mining company Tau-Ken Samruk on the joint development of the Severny Katpar and Verkhne Kairakty tungsten deposits in the Karaganda region of central Kazakhstan. Under the deal, the investment package includes plans to build two processing plants and a metallurgical facility, with a total projected value of $1.1 billion. Interest from Washington has also been reinforced at the political level. Speaking at the C5+1 Critical Minerals Dialogue in June, U.S. Special Envoy for South and Central Asia Sergio Gor said Washington intended to play an active role in developing Central Asia’s mining sectors. “Interest in Kazakhstan from American investors is high, but for that interest to materialize in practice, infrastructure, energy capacity and skilled personnel are critical,” Rodgers added. While foreign interest is rising, industry representatives said Kazakhstan’s ability to convert that interest into long-term investment will depend on the consistency of its legal and regulatory framework. Nikolai Radostovets, executive director of the Republican Association of Mining and Metallurgical Enterprises, said amendments to Kazakhstan’s Subsoil Code, adopted in 2018, should now be aligned with changes in environmental, water and land legislation introduced in recent years. Ruslan Baimishev, president of the Kazakhstan Mining Chamber, also highlighted the importance of legislative stability, particularly in tax policy, saying investors require consistency in government decisions. World Bank Senior Mining Specialist Remy Pelon said many countries are reforming their mining sectors to meet growing demand for minerals needed for the global energy transition. At the same time, Pelon warned against overcorrection. “Governments must create conditions for the efficient use of mineral resources in the interests of national development, but it is equally important to preserve a balance between industrial policy, openness to new market players and competitiveness,” he said. “That balance is especially important for countries aiming not only to extract raw materials, but also to develop processing, local manufacturing and technological expertise.” Kazakh officials used the forum to underscore recent legal measures designed to improve investor protections. Arman Khassenov, deputy chairman of the Committee for the Protection of Investors’ Rights under the Prosecutor General’s Office,...

Pensions

A History of Kazakhstan Pension Reforms: Between Market and Monopoly

Kazakhstanis rushed to withdraw pension savings in May ahead of a sharp increase in the minimum balances required to access their funds, in what may prove to be the final major wave of early withdrawals from the country’s state-run pension system. According to local financial outlet Kapital.kz, the Unified Accumulative Pension Fund (UAPF) processed 119,100 applications for one-time pension withdrawals for housing in May, twice as many as in April. The withdrawals totaled 117.8 billion tenge, roughly $240 million. The surge came shortly before new “minimum sufficiency thresholds” were published in early June, which will make early access to pension savings difficult for most working-age contributors. The change has reopened a wider debate over Kazakhstan’s pension system, which has undergone several transformations over the past quarter century. From a bold market experiment in the late 1990s, to a rigid state monopoly, and now back to a tightly regulated market model, the system has long struggled to balance the protection of citizens’ retirement savings with the need to generate investment returns. How Kazakhstan Got Here: The Private Market Experiment, 1998-2013 Before 1998, Kazakhstan operated a solidarity pension system, under which the state paid pensions from current revenues without maintaining individual retirement accounts. Pension payments depended mainly on length of service and salary level. The economic crisis that followed independence forced the government to change course. On January 1, 1998, Kazakhstan became the first post-Soviet country to adopt a funded pension model inspired by Chile’s system. It created a multi-tiered framework based on mandatory individual contributions equal to 10% of income, alongside a state-funded basic pension. The idea was straightforward: private pension funds would act as institutional investors, channeling billions into the economy while generating sustainable returns for contributors. For a time, the model was seen as one of the most ambitious financial reforms in Central Asia. But over the following years, serious flaws became increasingly clear. Eventually, the government itself acknowledged that the experiment had failed. Regulators identified several core problems. The first was negative real returns. Pension funds consistently underperformed inflation. Average annual returns stood at only 2.2%, while inflation averaged 6.8%, meaning citizens’ savings steadily lost purchasing power. The second was toxic assets. In pursuit of higher yields, pension funds invested heavily in opaque corporate securities. Of the 38 major issuers financed with pension money, 32 later went bankrupt, resulting in substantial write-offs borne by contributors. The third was high management fees. Private fund managers charged substantial commissions even during periods of poor performance or losses. Later audits found that many of these fees had been used to finance inflated executive salaries and bonuses. By the summer of 2013, the government had begun dismantling the private pension model. From Private Funds to State Monopoly, 2013-2020 By autumn 2013, all pension accounts from private funds had been transferred to the UAPF, which came under the management of the National Bank of Kazakhstan. The state monopoly addressed one major issue: the preservation of capital. But it also created a new institutional...

TCA Interviews

Kazakhstani Filmmaker Zhanana Kurmasheva on Her Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site Documentary

Zhanana Kurmasheva is a Kazakhstani documentary filmmaker and graduate of the T. K. Zhurgenov Kazakh National Academy of Arts, where she studied film directing. Her debut feature documentary, We Live Here, turns to the human legacy of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site through the lives of people still living with its consequences. The film became the first documentary from Kazakhstan selected for competition at CPH:DOX, one of the world’s leading documentary film festivals. Over the past year and a half, We Live Here has screened at international festivals and was nominated for Best Documentary Film at the 2025 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. In an interview with The Times of Central Asia, Kurmasheva discusses why the story of the Semipalatinsk test site resonates with audiences around the world, what it was like filming on contaminated land, the growing interest in tours to the area, and why her next film will focus on consumerism. TCA: Zhanana, We Live Here premiered at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, one of the world’s leading documentary film festivals. What did that moment mean for you? Zhanana: In the world of documentary cinema, CPH:DOX is one of the most prestigious festivals. Every filmmaker wants to be there because it showcases more than 200 of the strongest documentaries from around the world each year. Our film also became the first Kazakh project ever invited to compete in the festival. There were only 12 films in our section, and getting in was extremely difficult because the competition was intense. Being included in a program of that caliber came as a huge surprise to us. TCA: Why was it such a surprise? Zhanana: Honestly, when we were making this film, we never expected this level of success or invitations to so many festivals. By documentary standards, our project was produced on a very modest budget provided by Kazakhstan’s national film fund. The film was made largely through enthusiasm and dedication, without major international resources or influential foreign co-producers. We did everything ourselves. That is why I’m grateful for the opportunity CPH:DOX gave us. Participation there immediately brought international visibility to the film. TCA: What role did producer Banu Ramazanova play in bringing the film to international audiences? Zhanana: The fact that this film happened at all is largely thanks to our producer, Banu Ramazanova. She single-handedly promoted the film using her own resources. She believed in the project so strongly that she proved documentary cinema is worth investing in and that it can achieve a very high level. It’s wonderful that we have producers like her in Kazakhstan who genuinely care about the future of our documentary industry. TCA: Why do you think the selection committees responded to the film? Zhanana: It’s difficult for me to judge because we weren’t the ones making the selections. But if I had to guess, several factors played a role. First, Central Asia is still largely absent from the global documentary landscape. People know very little about our region, so any appearance of material from here naturally...

Infrastructure Finance

Opinion: Central Asia’s Shift from Silk Road Romance to Infrastructure Finance – What the June Forums Are Building

In mid-June, Tashkent and Baku will host two major international finance gatherings within the same regional window: the fifth Tashkent International Investment Forum in Uzbekistan, and the Islamic Development Bank Group’s 2026 Annual Meetings in Azerbaijan. The overlap in timing is useful less as a calendar coincidence than as a signal of how infrastructure, finance, and regional integration are now being discussed together. In Tashkent, the fifth Tashkent International Investment Forum opens under the theme “Investment Resilience: New Frontiers, New Partnerships.” In Baku, the Islamic Development Bank Group will convene delegates from its 57 member countries under the theme “Regional Integration for Sustainable Prosperity.” Add the Astana International Financial Centre’s increasingly active forum calendar, a new cross-border Islamic finance alliance signed in May among regional industry associations, and a stream of connectivity and green investment pledges from recent regional summits, and the wider region looks increasingly focused on turning connectivity talk into investment structures. The more important question is not how much money is being discussed, but what kinds of projects are becoming investable. One answer keeps surfacing: a multi-thousand-kilometer trade route that carries goods from China across Kazakhstan, over the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan, and onward through Georgia and Türkiye to Europe. The Middle Corridor, formally known as the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, runs through many of the investment pitches now being made across the region. The forums show how infrastructure, finance, and regional connectivity are increasingly being discussed together. The corridor is one of the clearest tests of whether that agenda can move from conference language into bankable projects. For most of the past century, the world categorized this region under two headings. One is heritage: the caravanserais and blue domes of the old Silk Road. The other is hydrocarbons: the oil and gas beneath the Caspian basin. Both cast the region as a place value came out of or once passed through. The corridor proposes something more ambitious: that value should pass through again, but this time on terms shaped by the region itself. The shift is from selling what lies underground to earning from where the region sits on the map. Freight volumes on the Middle Corridor have risen roughly fivefold over recent years, while transit times have been cut from about a month to roughly two weeks as border procedures and port operations improved. The World Bank’s benchmark study sets out the goal of tripling freight volumes and halving travel time by 2030, and regional projections now point to annual throughput of around ten million tons or more by the end of the decade. For landlocked economies long dependent on a single route to world markets, a second viable artery is less a convenience than a form of strategic insurance. But turning a route on a map into a working corridor requires serious capital. It requires expanded port capacity on the Caspian, additional vessels and ferries, rail upgrades, terminal infrastructure, and the less visible digital and customs systems that allow cargo to clear multiple borders...

AMM 2026

Ambassador Kazykhan Calls for U.S.–Kazakhstan Critical Minerals Projects at AMM Congress

ASTANA — Ambassador Yerzhan Kazykhan, Kazakhstan’s presidential representative for negotiations with the United States, delivered the opening remarks at the U.S.–Kazakhstan Country Roundtable during the Astana Mining & Metallurgy Congress on June 11, calling for expanding bilateral ties to be turned into practical critical minerals projects. The roundtable brought together U.S. officials, American businesses, and Kazakh counterparts to discuss practical measures for advancing projects in the critical minerals sector. His remarks focused on turning the U.S.–Kazakhstan minerals agenda into projects, investment, offtake agreements, processing capacity, and more resilient supply chains. Kazykhan placed the discussion within President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s broader effort to deepen the U.S.–Kazakhstan relationship around energy, supply-chain security, investment, and critical minerals. According to the transcript of his remarks, he referred to the November 6 meeting between Tokayev and U.S. President Donald J. Trump, saying the two leaders had met “to unlock the substantial potential” of what the U.S. State Department had called “A New Era” in bilateral relations. “The strategic understanding reached by our leaders was fully aligned with the national interests of both countries,” Kazykhan said. He said that understanding included support for energy security, supply-chain resilience, and a “shared commitment to strengthening cooperation in energy, rare earths, and other critical minerals.” He argued that the agenda had already moved beyond diplomacy. “You can see these priorities are not abstract,” Kazykhan said. “They are being advanced through concrete partnerships that strengthen industrial capacity, accelerate technological development, and support emerging fields such as artificial intelligence.” Kazykhan presented Kazakhstan as a strategic partner for Washington at a time when the United States and its allies are seeking alternatives to concentrated supply chains for minerals used in defense, energy, advanced manufacturing, and emerging technologies. “Kazakhstan is uniquely positioned to serve as a strategic partner for the United States, one that can offer increased resilience and enhanced competitiveness,” Kazykhan said. He described Kazakhstan as “a reliable and substantial supplier” and “a Middle Power with regional influence, a diversified industrial base, and one of the world’s top 50 economies.” He also pointed to Kazakhstan’s mineral base, saying the country holds top-ten reserves of tungsten, molybdenum, tantalum, nickel, cobalt, and lithium, along with deposits of other critical elements. Kazakhstan is also the world’s largest uranium producer, accounting for about 40% of global output and more than 20% of U.S. natural uranium imports, he said. But Kazykhan’s central argument was that Kazakhstan should not be viewed only as a source of raw materials. He said durable supply-chain security requires processing, refining, and integration into higher-value industrial stages. “Mining alone is not enough,” he said. “True supply-chain security requires processing, refining, and downstream integration.” He added that Kazakhstan “is not a greenfield jurisdiction,” citing its industrial workforce, established producers, export record, and institutional capacity for long-duration resource projects. Kazykhan also linked the minerals agenda to transport and logistics. He said Kazakhstan has been strengthening access to the Caspian Sea and expanding connectivity through the Trans-Caspian and broader East-West corridors, giving it routes to deliver materials...

AMM 2026

Kazakhstan Seeks More Than Extraction as U.S. Minerals Interest Grows

Kazakhstan is using renewed U.S. interest in critical minerals to push a larger industrial goal: moving beyond raw-material exports and into processing, technology transfer, and higher-value manufacturing. That ambition was on display in Astana this week across two closely linked but distinct events. The C5+1 Critical Minerals Dialogue, held on June 10, brought together representatives of the five Central Asian states and the United States for a diplomatic discussion on supply-chain cooperation. The following day, the 16th International Mining and Metallurgy Congress and Exhibition, Astana Mining & Metallurgy (AMM) 2026 opened as an industry forum for mining companies, investors, technology providers, and government officials. The proximity was deliberate; the purposes were different. For Kazakhstan, the issue is not only foreign demand. It wants critical minerals to support a wider industrial strategy, including domestic processing, engineering capacity, and new manufacturing clusters. June 10: The C5+1 Diplomatic Track The C5+1 dialogue brought together representatives of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and the United States. Its agenda covered geological exploration, surveying and mapping, mining and processing, logistics, and global value and supply chains. Kazakhstan’s Minister of Industry and Construction, Yersayin Nagaspayev, used the dialogue to present critical minerals as part of the country’s industrial policy rather than simply as an export opportunity. U.S. Special Envoy for South and Central Asian Affairs Sergio Gor represented Washington at the meeting. “Kazakhstan is interested not only in exporting raw materials, but also in developing joint production facilities, technology transfer, workforce training, and scientific cooperation,” Nagaspayev said. That point is central to Astana’s pitch. Kazakhstan has long been a major mining state, but the government is increasingly presenting critical minerals as a way to change the structure of the economy. Nagaspayev said the country has more than 9,500 mineral deposits, including more than 100 that contain rare and rare-earth metals. Kazakhstan holds significant deposits of tungsten and molybdenum and has the potential to establish a domestic raw-material base for tantalum and niobium production. It also has reserves of lithium and beryllium, which are important for advanced manufacturing, electronics, aerospace, energy storage, and defense-related industries. Kazakhstan has proven reserves or active production of roughly half of the 54 minerals identified as critical by the United States, according to Al-Farabi Ydyryshev, director general of the National Center for Technological Forecasting under the Industrial Committee. Ydyryshev said Kazakhstan already has extraction and processing capacity for materials used in aerospace, electronics, energy, and defense industries, including beryllium, tantalum, niobium, titanium, and rhenium. The question is whether those capabilities can be expanded into higher-value production. Washington’s interest in Central Asia has grown as critical minerals have become a larger part of economic security policy. China remains dominant in the production and processing of many minerals needed for batteries, semiconductors, renewable energy, digital infrastructure, and advanced defense systems. Speaking at the June 10 meeting, Gor linked the minerals agenda to the need for diversification. “Our economic security depends on our ability to diversify our access to critical minerals,” Gor said. “Ensuring reliable access...