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Astana Finance Days 2026

S&P Bolsters Kazakhstan’s Standing as Central Asia’s Financial Hub

S&P Global Ratings has improved its assessment of Kazakhstan’s banking industry as Astana Finance Days opens on September 9, lowering the industry risk score for the country’s banking system from 7 to 6 and citing stronger regulation and supervision. According to Kazakhstan’s Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market, the September 4 decision improved the industry risk component of S&P’s Banking Industry Country Risk Assessment, or BICRA. S&P also changed the trend on Kazakhstan’s separate economic risk assessment from stable to positive. S&P’s BICRA framework evaluates banking systems on a scale of 1 to 10, with lower numbers indicating lower risk. Industry risk assesses factors including banking regulation and supervision, competitive dynamics, and the stability of systemwide funding. Kazakhstan’s overall BICRA grouping remains at 7, while its industry risk score improved from 7 to 6. The industry risk comparison puts the change in perspective. S&P’s published assessments place the United States at 3, Germany at 4, and Brazil at 5. Kazakhstan’s new score of 6 places it alongside banking systems including Bahrain, Oman and Thailand in recent S&P assessments. Within Central Asia, the difference is wider. S&P has assigned Kyrgyzstan an industry-risk score of 8 and Uzbekistan a score of 9. S&P does not currently publish BICRA assessments for Tajikistan or Turkmenistan. S&P also considers Kazakhstan’s banking regulation and supervision more effective than those of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, according to the Kazakh regulator. Stronger Supervision The regulator attributed S&P’s decision to regular asset-quality reviews, risk-based supervisory assessments and measures to limit excessive bank risk-taking, particularly in retail lending. It also cited tighter capital and liquidity oversight and stress testing. The change has already affected individual institutions. The regulator reported an upgrade of the Bank Center Credit’s long-term rating to BB+, while Halyk Bank’s BBB− rating received a positive outlook, indicating the possibility of a future upgrade. The banking decision follows S&P’s August 21 sovereign upgrade from BBB− to BBB with a stable outlook. Kazakhstan remains Central Asia’s only investment-grade sovereign. In an interview with TCA, National Bank Governor Timur Suleimenov linked that improvement to a stronger monetary policy framework, banking resilience, and closer coordination with the government. Kazakhstan also has Central Asia’s most developed capital markets. Almaty’s banks, professional services and Kazakhstan Stock Exchange operate alongside the Astana International Financial Centre and its exchange, giving the country an established concentration of financial business. Capital on the Agenda The timing of S&P’s decision gives the assessment added relevance as Kazakhstan hosts Astana Finance Days. The forum’s announced program includes regulation, law and market confidence, capital market development, and financing for the real economy. Organizers expect more than 5,500 participants from over 80 countries, with representatives of BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and Brookfield among the confirmed speakers. In an August 27 interview with TCA, Zhanbolat Kakishev, chief product officer at the AIFC Authority, said a cumulative $26.3 billion in investment had been attracted to Kazakhstan through the center’s ecosystem, which included more than 6,000 registered companies from 90 countries....

Nuclear Disarmament

Central Asian States Call for New Arms Controls as Nuclear Framework Weakens

Foreign ministers from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have called for new, verifiable arms control mechanisms to prevent a nuclear arms race, warning that international disarmament efforts are losing ground. In a joint statement issued on September 8 to mark 20 years since the signing of the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, the five governments expressed concern over stalled disarmament, the end of key agreements, and the modernization of nuclear arsenals. They urged nuclear powers to resume negotiations. The statement comes seven months after New START, the last U.S.-Russian strategic nuclear arms treaty, expired on February 5. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said its expiration left the two countries without binding limits on their strategic nuclear arsenals for the first time in more than half a century. President Donald Trump has criticized New START as a “badly negotiated deal” and called instead for a new, modernized arms control treaty that would include China. The ministers also cited the failure of the Eleventh Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which ended without a consensus outcome on May 22. Kazakhstan had already advanced a similar position. As TCA reported, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev used the August 29 anniversary of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site’s closure to call for negotiations among nuclear powers, the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and renewed multilateral action to reduce nuclear risks. Kazakhstan’s connection to the issue extends beyond diplomacy. The Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk between 1949 and 1989. Kazakhstan closed the site in 1991 and subsequently relinquished the nuclear arsenal it had inherited after the Soviet collapse. The regional treaty was signed in Semipalatinsk on September 8, 2006, and entered into force in 2009. It established the first nuclear-weapon-free zone located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere, directly bordering two nuclear-weapon states, Russia and China. That history gives Kazakhstan a distinctive place in regional nuclear diplomacy. Uzbekistan originated the proposal for the zone, presenting it at the UN General Assembly in September 1993. The September 8 statement explicitly acknowledges Uzbekistan’s initiative while crediting all five countries with establishing the zone. The statement also recognizes Kyrgyzstan for initiating the International Day for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Awareness, observed annually on March 5, and Turkmenistan for chairing the December 2024 anniversary meeting in Ashgabat. Kazakhstan has also helped coordinate cooperation beyond Central Asia. In August 2024, it hosted a conference in Astana with the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs to strengthen cooperation among nuclear-weapon-free zones, following an earlier meeting in 2019. The five states also renewed their appeal for the United States to ratify a protocol providing security assurances to the region. In May 2014, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States signed the protocol on negative security assurances, committing not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against the five Central Asian treaty members. The other four signatories have ratified it. Washington has not. The request is longstanding. The five governments made the same appeal...

Cinematography

“It’s a Fantasy About Those Who Could Have Prevented the Tragedy”: Shugyla Yeshen on Kazakhstan’s New Cinema

Kazakhstan’s Semipalatinsk nuclear test site was the scene of more than 450 Soviet nuclear tests, leaving a legacy of illness, environmental damage, and displacement that continues to shape the country. A new historical action film, Zheti Qaraqshy, reimagines that history through a group of seven young heroes who set out to prevent the tragedy. For 24-year-old actress Shugyla Yeshen, who plays one of the seven, the film prompted her to look more closely at a history she had known about since childhood. Yeshen also works at one of Kazakhstan’s leading Kazakh-language theaters and is beginning to develop projects of her own. In an interview with The Times of Central Asia, she discussed the shortage of substantial roles for women, the discipline she learned in theater, her ambitions beyond Kazakhstan, and why her character goes into action armed with a slingshot. TCA: One of Kazakhstan’s most anticipated projects of the year, Zheti Qaraqshy, will be released on September 24. Tell us about the film and your character. Yeshen: Literally translated from Kazakh, Zheti Qaraqshy means “Seven Bandits,” but there is a play on words: it is also the Kazakh name for the Big Dipper. It’s a historical action film set in the 1980s. It’s about seven very different people who come together for one important mission. They all have very different personalities, but they’re interesting, and each of them has secrets. My character’s name is Gainy. She grew up in an orphanage with her foster brothers. I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but at some point they become the heroes of one of the most important historical events. TCA: The film tells Kazakhstan’s history in the language of comic books. Is it a kind of Kazakh Suicide Squad? Yeshen: Probably, yes. Each of the seven has their own weapon. Mine, for example, is a slingshot. It seems like a childish, harmless weapon, but when you actually pick one up, it can be quite dangerous and hit a target very accurately. It all depends on who is holding it. I think that describes my character perfectly. Gainy is the same: she looks like a harmless girl, but in reality she is a strong and daring heroine. TCA: The film is connected to the tragedy of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, where the Soviet Union conducted hundreds of nuclear tests. You belong to a very young generation of Kazakhstanis. How much did you know about this history before filming? Yeshen: Of course, I had known about it since childhood, but to be honest, I had never really gone very deeply into the subject. It was only when we started filming – and even after the film – that I began to fully understand what it was really about and how many lives the test site actually destroyed. An older colleague of mine said something I really liked. He said this film is a fantasy about a team of brave young people who could...

Labor Force

Kazakhstan’s Factory Expansion Faces a Skilled Labor Shortage

Kazakhstan plans to create tens of thousands of jobs at new factories, but lacks qualified workers. Around 200 industrial projects are scheduled to be launched in 2026, followed by new metallurgical, engineering, and chemical plants. The facilities can be built within a few years, but training the staff needed to operate them may take significantly longer. A 2025 estimate suggested the shortage of qualified workers in manufacturing, construction, and engineering-related fields could exceed 100,000. The projects planned for 2026 are worth a combined 1.7 trillion tenge, or approximately $3.6 billion, and are expected to create around 18,000 permanent jobs. The next wave of projects will require several thousand more workers. Seven new projects in ferrous metallurgy are planned for 2027–2028, creating more than 3,500 permanent jobs. Another six facilities in non-ferrous metallurgy are planned for the same period, creating more than 800 jobs. Behind those plans are facilities producing steel and ferroalloys, copper and aluminum products, trucks, road machinery, and chemicals. Kazakhstan is seeking to process more of its own raw materials domestically and export products with higher added value. For an economy that remains heavily dependent on oil, metals, and other commodities, the success of that policy will shape its prospects for further diversification. The Asian Development Bank has identified higher productivity and stronger human capital as important conditions for that transition. In March 2025, National Engineering Academy President Bakytzhan Zhumagulov said the shortage of qualified workers in construction, manufacturing, engineering and technical fields could exceed 100,000. Meanwhile, in April 2026, Science and Higher Education Minister Sayasat Nurbek warned that the gap between the specialists being trained and the needs of the economy was widening. The Ministry of Labor has pointed to another imbalance: on the Enbek electronic labor exchange in May 2025, demand for workers with mid-level qualifications exceeded supply by 16%. Tomorrow’s Factories and Today’s Labor Market The government is already trying to reshape vocational education. In 2025, 70% of state-funded college places were allocated to technical fields, including mechanical engineering, transportation, energy, IT, and construction. Kazakhstan operates a system for forecasting the economy’s labor needs, estimating demand by occupation, region, and industry several years ahead, taking into account both newly created jobs and the need to replace people leaving the labor market. These projections are intended to guide state-funded education and vocational training. The potential scale of future demand is substantial. A forecast published in 2025 estimated that the economy would require around 1.6 million workers over the following six years, including about 900,000 people with technical and vocational education. Demand for workers in skilled trades alone was estimated at more than 400,000. Construction, agriculture, and manufacturing were expected to be among the main employers. Yet the current labor market still reflects a fairly traditional pattern. Kazakhstan has a short-term vocational training program for unemployed people. Employers submit requests for the specialists they need and guarantee employment, while the state pays for their training. More than 11 billion tenge, approximately $23 million, was allocated to the...

City Planning

Almaty and Astana Set to Retain Central Asia’s Economic Lead

Almaty long combined Kazakhstan’s political and commercial functions and established itself as Central Asia’s leading business center. After Astana became Kazakhstan’s capital, the two cities developed increasingly complementary roles, with Almaty remaining the region’s largest business and financial hub while Astana accumulated political, institutional and corporate weight. Kazakhstan’s updated figures put Astana’s growth at about 10% and Almaty’s at about 5%. Together, the two cities generated roughly $107 billion in 2025. Together, they have become a two-city engine anchoring much of Central Asia’s commerce. Almaty and Astana benefit from an economic scale unmatched elsewhere in Central Asia. Kazakhstan alone accounts for more than half of the region’s GDP and roughly two-thirds of its inward FDI stock, according to TCA’s Central Asia Balance Sheet. That scale helps generate the fiscal resources needed to build and maintain the municipal infrastructure that supports business activity. Kazakhstan also has Central Asia’s most developed capital markets. The combination of the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) in Almaty and the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) and Astana International Exchange (AIX) in Astana gives companies access to equity, debt, institutional investors and financial infrastructure at a scale no other market in the region currently matches. Kazakhstan is also the only Central Asian country with an investment-grade sovereign rating, lowering the country-risk premium and helping reduce financing costs for companies and projects relative to lower-rated regional markets. These advantages have been reinforced over decades. Almaty and Astana have long served as regional bases for major global companies, creating an established ecosystem of corporate management, finance, professional services and skilled labor. That track record, in turn, strengthens their ability to attract further investment and regional headquarters. Tashkent and Bishkek are also growing rapidly Then there is Tashkent. Uzbekistan’s political and commercial capital had an economy of about $29 billion in 2025, about 40% the size of Almaty’s and three-quarters that of Astana. Tashkent has also experienced rapid growth, with its economy growing by 11.3% in real terms in 2025, according to preliminary national figures. Tashkent benefits from Uzbekistan’s demographic scale. The country’s population is almost twice Kazakhstan’s, giving its capital access to a much larger domestic market and labor pool. But that scale also raises the need for sustained job creation and continued investment in housing and infrastructure. If productivity and investment fail to keep pace with population growth, the demographic advantage could increasingly act as a constraint rather than help Tashkent close the gap with Almaty and Astana. Almaty and Astana, meanwhile, generate substantially more economic output per resident. In 2025, Gross Regional Product (GRP) per capita was approximately $29,900 in Almaty and $23,700 in Astana, compared with about $9,300 in Tashkent, using reporting-year average exchange rates. These figures measure output per resident, not labor productivity, household income or living standards. Like Tashkent, Bishkek combines the roles of political capital and principal economic center. On the reporting years used here, however, its economy is only about 30% as large. Its economy grew by 15.8% in 2024, according to Kyrgyzstan’s...

Tourism

Kazakhstan Tourism Investment Tops $4.8 Billion as Arrivals Rise

Kazakhstan recorded more than $4.8 billion in tourism investment in 2024 and 2025. Current projects include new hotels and mountain resorts, while the government is upgrading transport links to tourist areas as foreign visitor numbers rise. Investment in tourism reached 947.5 billion tenge ($2.08 billion) in 2024 and rose to 1.26 trillion tenge ($2.75 billion) in 2025. Kazakhstan has 328 tourism projects under way worth about 1.3 trillion tenge, or roughly $2.85 billion. These include new Hilton and Mandarin Oriental properties, as well as an expansion of the year-round Oi-Qaragai mountain resort near Almaty. The government expects the projects to create 25 new international-standard hotel complexes and around 10,000 permanent jobs. Revenue from hotels and other registered accommodation facilities also rose from 229 billion tenge, or roughly $500 million, in 2023 to 350.6 billion tenge, or about $770 million, in 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, the figure rose 13.9% year-on-year. Kazakhstan is also trying to extend the tourism season through year-round mountain tourism and a growing events calendar. Kazakhstan received 15.7 million foreign visitors in 2025, of whom authorities classified 11.1 million as tourists because they stayed in the country for more than one day. Spending by foreign visitors in the country totaled about $2.9 billion. Around 1.43 million foreign visitors used registered hotels and other accommodation facilities, although the figure excludes those staying with relatives or friends and those using unregistered accommodation. From Football to the World Noman Games The 2025 UEFA Champions League match between Almaty’s Kairat and Real Madrid attracted more than 5,000 foreign visitors to the city. Fans arrived from China, India, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Japan, and other countries. Kairat reached the league phase of the Champions League in 2025/26 but was eliminated in the third qualifying round this season, making the Real Madrid match a one-time attraction rather than a recurring source of visitors. Concerts offer a more repeatable version of the same model, with Jennifer Lopez and the Backstreet Boys performing in Almaty in 2025 and Deep Purple, Megadeth, Ricky Martin, and Enrique Iglesias following in 2026. Cirque du Soleil performances and major music festivals have also become part of the city’s events calendar. According to Mastercard, spending on international cards in Almaty during the Kairat-Real Madrid match rose 16% compared with the average for the two weeks before and after the event. It rose 11% during the Jennifer Lopez concert and 3% during the Backstreet Boys concert, while spending on Mastercard cards issued in Spain rose 81% during the Real Madrid match. The Jennifer Lopez concert attracted around 7,000 foreign spectators from 35 countries. Authorities estimated their direct tourism spending at more than 5 billion tenge, or roughly $11 million. The fifth World Nomad Games in Astana in 2024 attracted international visitors and extensive global coverage. Organized tours from the United Kingdom had sold out before the competition opened. Neighboring Countries Still Dominate Arrivals In the first half of 2026, Kazakhstan reported around 7 million foreign arrivals. The largest...