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Kazakhstan's Parliament

Kurultai Election Campaign Takes Shape in Parliament’s Final Budget Debate

Kazakhstan's outgoing parliament spent one of its final sessions debating the government's management of the 2025 budget, in what often resembled a dress rehearsal for the country's first Kurultai election campaign. On July 1, Kazakhstan’s new constitution will enter into force, replacing the current Senate and Mazhilis with a single-chamber Kurultai. The new legislature will have 145 deputies elected through party lists, and elections are expected in August. No current deputy will transfer automatically into the new chamber. Those who want to remain in national politics will need a place on a party list and a fresh mandate. That gave the June 26 session an unusual political significance: would any outgoing deputies use the budget debate to make a final public break with the government? Some did put pointed questions to Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov and Finance Minister Madi Takiyev as parliament reviewed and approved the reports of the government and the Supreme Audit Chamber on the execution of the republican budget for 2025. Finance Minister Madi Takiyev presented the figures in optimistic terms. According to him, Kazakhstan’s economy grew by 6.5% in 2025, while GDP increased by $14.7 billion in dollar terms. Meanwhile, public debt remains low at around 22.8% of GDP, or approximately $74.5 billion. Deputies asked Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov why, despite GDP growth of 6.5%, Kazakh citizens’ incomes had declined. Bektenov referred to high inflation, which has been eating into household incomes. “Last year, inflation peaked in September at 12.9%. Now, as a result of measures taken by the government, the National Bank and other interested agencies, inflation over the first five months of this year has declined to 10.4%,” the prime minister said. He recalled that the government had adopted a separate plan to raise household incomes. According to the government, the average monthly wage reached 442,000 tenge, about $910. He said there were already sectors, such as agriculture and transport, where real incomes had increased. Mazhilis deputy Azat Peruashev, who recently stepped down after 15 years as chairman of the Ak Zhol party but still heads its parliamentary faction, focused on the National Fund. He said the government had failed to keep an earlier promise to reduce withdrawals. “When approving the draft budget for 2024-2026, the government announced a plan to reduce withdrawals from the National Fund starting in 2025. In fact, the volume of funds received from the National Fund in 2025 remained high, at approximately $10.8 billion,” he said. The National Fund is one of the most politically sensitive parts of Kazakhstan’s public finances. Built largely from oil and gas revenue and managed through the National Bank, it is meant to serve two functions: to help stabilize the budget when commodity revenue falls, and to preserve part of the country’s resource wealth for future generations. Heavy withdrawals therefore carry a political cost. They can help cover current spending, but they also reduce the savings Kazakhstan has accumulated from its oil wealth, making the size of annual transfers a perennial political argument. Peruashev...

Kyrgyz-Uzbek Border

Chongara and Tash-Tobo: The Villages That Changed Countries Without Moving

About 2,500 people in Chongara and Tash-Tobo now live under Kyrgyz jurisdiction. The transfer reduces the number of Uzbek enclaves in Kyrgyzstan and clears the way for a much shorter road across the Batken Region. For Umitbek, the change first appeared online. Chongara, his home village, passed from Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Region into Kyrgyzstan when the legal border moved. “We are welcoming the decision with joy,” Umitbek told Azattyk. “Ninety-nine percent of our village is Kyrgyz.” Umitbek already holds a Kyrgyz passport, while many neighbors have Uzbek documents. Some households include citizens of both countries. The village has Kyrgyz and Uzbek schools, and families have chosen between them. Kyrgyz presidential spokesman Askat Alagozov announced the transfer on June 23. “Now registration procedures will be conducted in these villages, after which their residents will be granted Kyrgyz citizenship,” Alagozov said. He did not give a timetable for the process. Kyrgyzstan transferred plots of equal area to Uzbekistan as part of the settlement. Public announcement did not identify those plots or state their total size. The two governments also conducted a separate exchange involving 236 hectares. That land will support a road between the villages of Sai and Tayan, and shorten the journey between Aidarken and Batken from 225 kilometers to 55, or about 76% of the present route. Officials have yet to publish a construction date or budget. A Century Inside Another Republic Chongara and Tash-Tobo were Uzbek exclaves, pieces of Uzbekistan completely surrounded by Kyrgyz territory. Their unusual status grew from Soviet boundary decisions made a century ago. Chongara’s administrative link to the Uzbek Republic dates to territorial decisions around Sokh in 1925. Tash-Tobo was also assigned to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic that year. A parity commission confirmed its enclave status in 1955. These lines served as internal administrative boundaries during the Soviet period. Villages that had shared roads, water systems and family links found themselves divided by customs posts and citizenship rules. Uzbekistan previously had four exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan: Sokh, Shakhimardan, Chongara, and Tash-Tobo. Following the latest transfer, only Sokh and Shakhimardan remain under Uzbek jurisdiction. Sokh is the largest and most complicated. It lies within Kyrgyzstan, but has a largely ethnic Tajik population. Roads around the enclave have long shaped travel through the western Batken Region. A Settlement Built Over Two Decades Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan began formal border negotiations in 2000. Progress remained slow while relations between the two governments were strained. The process accelerated after Shavkat Mirziyoyev became Uzbekistan’s president in 2016. A 2017 agreement settled about 1,170 kilometers of the roughly 1,378-kilometer frontier. The remaining sections involved land, roads, and water infrastructure. The two foreign ministers signed a further border treaty in Bishkek on November 3, 2022, which covered sections left outside the 2017 settlement. On January 27, 2023, Mirziyoyev and Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov exchanged ratification instruments during a state visit to Bishkek. The legal delimitation fixed the agreed line on maps. Physical demarcation then placed that line on the ground. The 2022 package also...

Mary Power Outages

Power Outages in Turkmenistan Lead to Dismissals as Blackouts Continue

Complaints from residents of Turkmenistan’s Mary Region over widespread power outages have led to inspections and the dismissal of several local officials, but electricity disruptions continue, Turkmen.news reported. The outages began in mid-June during extreme heat, with temperatures in the region regularly exceeding 40 degrees Celsius. Residents have struggled to use air conditioners, refrigerators, and water pumps. Locals say power has been cut almost daily for three to four hours at a time. On June 17, hundreds of residents, mostly women from the Bayramaly district, gathered outside the Mary regional administration building and demanded a solution, Radio Azatlyk reported. The demonstrators sought a meeting with Dovranberdi Annaberdiyev, the hakim of Mary Velayat. After the talks, residents said outdated transformers were unable to cope with demand and warned of a possible failure of the local power system. Participants in the meeting said they also proposed arranging a video call with the country’s president if local authorities could not resolve the issue. The regional hakim promised to take action within days. After the protest, inspectors from Ashgabat arrived in the region. Turkmen.news, citing sources, said several officials were dismissed after the inspection over suspected abuses in electricity distribution. Local residents claim some officials increased power supplies to commercial facilities in exchange for payments, while restricting deliveries to residential neighborhoods. Despite the personnel changes, electricity disruptions continue in parts of Mary Region. Authorities have also begun partial infrastructure upgrades. In Bayramaly district, residents were promised that worn-out transformers would be replaced, although no information has been released about modernization work in other areas. Power supply problems during the hot season occur regularly in Turkmenistan. They are often linked to aging electricity grids that cannot cope with higher demand from household appliances and cooling systems. Although modernization of the energy system is included in state development programs, local residents say infrastructure upgrades in some districts have been delayed for years.

Biometric Identification

Turkmen Passport Applicants Sent for Medical Certificates After Fingerprint Scanner Failures

Citizens of Turkmenistan applying for biometric passports or traveling abroad are facing technical failures during fingerprint collection, according to Turkmen.news. Because Migration Service equipment often fails to recognize fingerprint patterns, people are being forced to obtain special medical certificates confirming the “impossibility of undergoing fingerprinting.” According to the publication, the problem does not lie in the absence of fingerprints themselves, but in the operation of the scanners. Many applicants say the equipment is unable to capture data even when clearly visible papillary ridge patterns are present. As a result, citizens are trying different methods to improve the chances of a successful scan, including moisturizing or de-greasing their skin and testing multiple devices. In some cases, this works: one scanner may fail to recognize fingerprints while another successfully completes the procedure. If fingerprinting is unsuccessful, Migration Service staff direct applicants to dermatology and venereology clinics for an official certificate confirming the inability to take fingerprints. This procedure is provided for under Turkmenistan’s legislation. However, possession of such a certificate does not always resolve the problem. Journalists report that in some cases, officials have refused to accept the document, citing an alleged age restriction for citizens under 40, even though no such requirement appears in the official list of documents. The difficulties are not limited to passport applications. The same procedure is required when crossing the border. There have been cases where fingerprints were successfully recorded during passport issuance, but at the airport the system suddenly failed to recognize them, creating the risk of missing a flight. According to Turkmen.news, such incidents occur frequently enough that migration officers treat them as a routine part of the process.

Healthcare

Tokayev Says Kazakhstan Offers Healthcare Benefits Unavailable in Some Western Countries

Kazakhstan provides its citizens with a range of social guarantees that, according to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, are unavailable even in some of the world’s most developed countries. Tokayev made the remarks during an awards ceremony for healthcare workers ahead of their professional holiday. Kazakhstan marks Medical Workers’ Day annually on the third Sunday of June, which falls on June 21 this year. Speaking at the ceremony, Tokayev said Kazakhstan remains a social state and that fulfilling social obligations is a constitutional responsibility of all branches of government. He noted that more than 9 trillion tenge, or almost $18 billion, was allocated from the national budget for social spending last year alone. “The implementation of the Guaranteed Volume of Free Medical Care Program is also a constitutional obligation. This is a unique program with no equivalent abroad, at least in terms of the scale of free medical services provided,” Tokayev said. He also pointed to maternity benefits as another example. “Women in Kazakhstan receive three years of maternity leave with payments and job security. These are unique conditions for young mothers. I worked in the West, particularly in Switzerland, and studied their system. Such arrangements do not exist there or in other Western countries,” he said. Tokayev added that Kazakhstan is developing as a regional center for medical tourism, citing high treatment standards and competitive pricing. Earlier this month, Tourism and Sports Minister Yerbol Myrzabosynov reported that about 80,000 foreign patients had received medical care in Kazakhstan. Tokayev linked much of the sector’s progress to accelerated digitalization in healthcare. “Kazakhstan has actively begun introducing advanced technologies across all sectors, including medicine. This has given a new impulse to the development of our healthcare system,” he said. According to the president, the use of digital technologies has reduced diagnostic times by four times and increased the detection rate of malignant tumors by 30%. Artificial intelligence tools are now assisting doctors in making complex clinical decisions. More than 1,800 medical institutions across the country have switched to digital systems, while the integration of healthcare information platforms has reduced administrative costs by up to 40%, he said. Tokayev also highlighted the government’s efforts to improve the social standing of healthcare workers. He said state support for medical professionals has increased seven times over the past three years, with wages rising gradually. This year, Kazakhstan allocated 33 billion tenge, or about $67.4 million, for salary increases and additional support measures. “These initiatives have helped stabilize the staffing of the healthcare system,” Tokayev said. “New specialized scientific institutes, multidisciplinary hospitals, modern clinics, and perinatal centers are being launched in the capital and the regions. The government must now carry out a large-scale renovation of the entire healthcare infrastructure and modernize its material and technical base.” As previously reported by The Times of Central Asia, Kazakhstan opened Central Asia’s first Brain Research Institute this summer. Tokayev also announced last autumn that science cities would be established in Almaty and Kurchatov, with nuclear medicine among the planned research...

Digital Development

Turkmenistan’s Digital Push Gains Ground Despite Tight Internet Controls

Turkmenistan remains one of the world's most tightly controlled online environments. Yet its state services portal now advertises more than 500 services, the country has more than 100,000 registered mobile-banking users, and the flagship city of Arkadag has launched a 5G network. The figures are official or state-linked and difficult to verify, and the scale remains modest by regional standards. Taken together, however, they point to a shift: digitalization is beginning to move beyond government rhetoric and into everyday administrative and financial life. A Shift That Is Hard to Measure Turkmenistan's digital transition is difficult to quantify. Official statistics are incomplete and independent checks are rare. That makes smaller, observable indicators - portal use, mobile-banking registrations, network launches, and infrastructure projects - especially useful. According to DataReportal, Turkmenistan had 3.53 million internet users in October 2025, equivalent to 46.1% of the population. Using the same source, internet access stood at 93.4% in Kazakhstan and 89.0% in Uzbekistan. Other estimates put Turkmenistan's rate lower, underscoring the uncertainty around even basic connectivity data. DataReportal also counted 5.24 million active cellular connections, representing 68.5% of the population, although a connection does not necessarily include mobile internet access. Social media use remains far more limited: the same report estimated 388,000 social media user identities in October 2025, or 5.1% of the population. Those figures coexist with severe controls. Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2026 that internet access remains tightly controlled. The authorities have also seized and dismantled Starlink equipment and intensified internet blocking. However, targeted infrastructure projects are moving ahead. The 5G network launched in Arkadag in 2025 was implemented with Huawei and the Ministry of Communications and, according to official accounts, is intended mainly to support smart-city systems. The ministry says it is also developing a fiber-optic route toward Herat and a submarine cable with Azerbaijan to add international links and transit capacity. E-Government Moves Beyond the Legal Framework Turkmenistan launched its unified public services portal, e.gov.tm, in 2019. The Law 'On Electronic Government' came into force in July 2022, formally setting out how public bodies could provide services through information and communication technologies and exchange data electronically. The portal is available through a website and Android and iOS apps. It allows users to pay utility, communications, and education fees, book tickets, join the electronic queue for migration services, and submit applications to government agencies. Published service counts vary sharply. In April 2025, Orient referred to 46 services; in March 2026, the same publication said the portal offered more than 500. The reports do not explain the rise, but the larger figure appears to use a broader definition that includes informational pages and other functions, not only fully interactive services. In October 2025, President Serdar Berdimuhamedov approved the Concept for the Development of the Digital Economy for 2026-2028. A state program and implementation plan followed in January 2026. The documents call for wider use of digital systems across government and the economy, while separate work with the United Nations Development...