Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina Wins US Open Ahead of World No. 1 Debut
Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina has won the US Open women’s singles title, defeating Aryna Sabalenka 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 in New York to claim the third Grand Slam championship of her career. Rybakina entered the final having already secured the world No. 1 ranking following her quarterfinal victory over Zheng Qinwen. She will officially take the top position when the new WTA rankings are published on Monday, becoming the first player representing Kazakhstan to reach No. 1 in singles. The US Open title adds to her Wimbledon championship in 2022 and Australian Open victory earlier this year. She has now won three of the four Grand Slam tournaments. Sabalenka entered the final as world No. 1 and two-time defending US Open champion. The match was also a rematch of this year’s Australian Open final, which Rybakina won. Rybakina has become one of Kazakhstan’s most prominent international athletes. Her run in New York included victories over Naomi Osaka, Zheng and Coco Gauff before the final. Speaking during the tournament, Rybakina said she was “very proud representing Kazakhstan” and noted growing interest in tennis among children in the country. Her success has marked a series of firsts for Kazakhstan. She became the first player representing the country to win a Grand Slam singles title at Wimbledon and is now the first to reach the top of the world rankings.
Astana Finance Days: Rewiring Finance at Institutional Scale – The Case for Deeper Financial Markets
Kazakhstan needs deeper financial markets and a system less dependent on banks, senior financial officials told Astana Finance Days on September 9, 2026. Speakers at the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) explored how digital finance could support that shift during the plenary session, "Innovation at Institutional Scale: Rewiring the Architecture of Finance." The turnout was standing-room only. Over the next fifty minutes, the panelists discussed Kazakhstan’s ambitions as a financial hub and the conditions needed to advance them. Moderator Sallianne Taylor, Bloomberg's EMEA Head of Government Relations, opened by asking what is fundamentally changing in the architecture of global finance, and what it means for Kazakhstan. There were five panelists: Timur Suleimenov, Governor of the National Bank of Kazakhstan; Renat Bekturov, Governor of the AIFC; Timur Turlov, Chief Executive of Freedom Holding Corp.; Sergio Mello, Global Head of Stablecoin Solutions at Anchorage Digital; and Balaji Srinivasan, founder of Network School and bestselling author of The Network State. The Governor's Priority: Stability Before Speed Governor Suleimenov began by naming "geopolitical tension" as the backdrop to today's discussions. "This is the elephant in the room, which we cannot ignore," he said, without further comment. He then described trade and finance flows as changing fundamentally, pointing to "division across the Atlantic. We're seeing trade wars, semi-trade wars across the world." He explained that "finance has always been a partner with trade, investment and finance." That atmosphere of uncertainty "reshapes financial flows," he said. Turning to technology, he noted that "with the invention of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and everything in between, the traditional financial system has started to undergo very fundamental change. I think we're still in the rule-setting phase." As a result, he said, "There is no set of global rules for decentralized finance, for digital finance, crypto finance. Many countries are looking to strike the right balance between the traditional financial institutions such as banks or commodities or securities markets, and the new ways of doing finance that the market is offering." For Kazakhstan specifically, he argued the moment favors the country rather than threatens it. "I think for Kazakhstan, it's more of an opportunity," he said, pointing to its standing as the region's largest economy by GDP and GDP per capita, and its position as "the biggest financial system, the best financial system, the most capitalized" in Central Asia. That confidence carried into the moderator's next question: "As a central banker, how do you balance innovation with preserving that financial stability and trust?" Suleimenov called it "a never-ending story," then offered the line that framed the whole session: "When you see something new, and you don't have the rules for it, of course you have to evaluate it based on its merits and based on principles rather than rules, and then you come up with rules." He was candid about the risk that comes with new financial technology, but just as quick to put it in proportion. "What we've been seeing in Kazakhstan, I mean, it's 90% positive," he said, acknowledging that "with any new technologies, with any new financial tools, instruments, there is some percentage of that being used for something beyond the law, something in a darker area," which is where, he noted, the country's financial monitoring agency steps in. Still, he insisted, "the vast majority of that is white [legitimate]," and not "a formidable test that we need to tackle." AIFC’s Role in Financial Innovation Bekturov, taking the floor next, stated that, "I think that the competitive advantage of Kazakhstan is in its people," and credited Suleimenov by name as an official "open for innovation and open for new ideas," willing to treat risky new instruments on their merits rather than banning them outright; "as he said, they are risky, but it depends on how you think about it." He described AIFC as a laboratory for the wider Kazakh financial system: "The value of AIFC is providing that optionality and opportunity to test that which you are not yet ready to test within the whole system." He also said the model was attracting interest beyond Kazakhstan’s borders: "We see that [our] model is becoming more popular in many countries to try to replicate". New Competition, Warmly Received The discussion turned to competition from international and regional financial firms. Turlov, whose Freedom Holding enterprise spans brokerage, banking, and payments, put it plainly: "On our relational market, we are facing competition from European firms, from U.S. firms, from other Central Asian firms, from big cryptocurrency global exchanges which exist everywhere and nowhere simultaneously." He argued that competition pushes Kazakhstan’s own firms to mature faster. "If you're already competitive in your country and you're facing global competition, it's very logical to scale out." Srinivasan offered a broader vision of digital finance. Casting the internet as "a new continent" people commute to daily, he argued that money, property, and trust are all migrating on-chain, meaning onto blockchain networks, and that Kazakhstan, landlocked by geography, could turn that liability into an asset. "The market size is not 21 million anymore; it's 8 billion," he said, describing every person on earth as a potential customer once assets and trust can be represented as code rather than paper. His pitch for the country's future brand: "cloud first, land last, but not land never," with Astana positioned, in his words, as "the land of the cloud." Everything not built this way, he suggested, is a target: "The only secure systems will be on-chain... and so smart contract chains are going to be the only secure backends because everything else will get hacked." That was his prediction, rather than an established security guarantee. Smart contracts also face security vulnerabilities. Mello, closing the substantive debate, struck a calmer note but landed on similar ground: the technology, he said, has already left the experimental stage. "It's an instrument that is no longer an experiment," he said of stablecoins, adding that “regulation can absolutely propel innovation in a country and we've seen it here. The success of Kazakhstan in the last decade is not because of lack of regulation, but it's because the regulators have been very proactive.” Five Closing Priorities The moderator closed the session with one question put to each panelist in turn: "If we were to meet again in Astana Finance Days, say, in three years' time, what's the one change that you'd like to see in Kazakhstan's financial system by then?" Suleimenov went first. "That's a tough one," he admitted. Pressed to pick just one, he said: "I would like to see a less bank-centered financial system. If it was just for one change, I would like to see both the securities markets in all its kinds and shapes to play a bigger role in our financial system than today." Bekturov identified a constraint: "The depth of liquidity in our financial system." He was candid that it isn't a lever AIFC can simply pull. "This is one thing that is out of our control, right? We have influence, but we don't have control." Turlov's answer looked outward rather than inward: "I want to see financial institutions much more global than now and playing a much bigger role in global finance." Srinivasan, characteristically, went furthest. He wanted, he said, "every valuable asset and document and credential represented on-chain, because that will actually get you the liquidity that you want." He argued that this would increase global market access while lowering costs, and position Kazakhstan as more than just "the leader in crypto," but as "the internet first country." Mello brought the round back to fundamentals: A "very diverse supply of foreign direct investment and participants from all over the world that consider this a neutral ground to growth." The Road Ahead The discussion showed a shared appetite for financial innovation, alongside recognition of the need for deeper markets. Suleimenov emphasized judging new technologies on their merits, while developing the rules to govern them. For AIFC, the ambition is to provide room for that experimentation, even as the liquidity constraint remains beyond its direct control. For more on our special coverage of Astana Finance Days, click here.
New OECD Assessment Reveals Central Asia’s Student Performance
International student assessments help governments identify where students are succeeding, where they are falling behind and how learning outcomes are changing over time.
The Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, tests how well 15-year-olds can apply what they have learned in science, mathematics and reading to real-world problems. Run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the assessment is intended to identify weaknesses and track whether learning improves over time. The results released on September 8 show improvement in some areas, declines in others and significant gaps in the regional data. PISA 2025 placed particular emphasis on science and introduced a new assessment of computational problem-solving, part of its broader work on learning in the digital world. What the Results Show Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan participated nationally. Tajikistan was represented by Dushanbe rather than a national sample, while Turkmenistan did not participate.| Participant | Science | Math | Reading | Comp. Problem Solving |
| Kazakhstan | 420 | 414 | 385 | 449 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 363 | 364 | 344 | 388 |
| Dushanbe, TJK | 334 | 382 | 368 | — |
| Uzbekistan | 438 | N/A | N/A | 402 |
| OECD average | 482 | 463 | 461 | 500 |
| Country | Comparison Period |
Science | Math | Reading |
| Kazakhstan | 2022–2025 | −4 | −12 | −1 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 2009–2025 | +33 | +33 | +30 |
| Uzbekistan | 2022–2025 | +83 | N/A | N/A |
Pannier and Hillard’s Spotlight on Central Asia: New Episode Coming Sunday
As Managing Editor of The Times of Central Asia, I’m delighted that, in partnership with the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs, we are the home of the Spotlight on Central Asia podcast. Chaired by seasoned broadcasters Bruce Pannier of RFE/RL’s long-running Majlis podcast and Michael Hillard of The Red Line, each fortnightly instalment will take you on a deep dive into the latest news, developments, security issues, and social trends across an increasingly pivotal region. This week, the team covers the sixth World Nomad Games, held in Kyrgyzstan last week, which brought the country unprecedented international attention. Special guests: Stephen M. Bland, Managing Editor at TCA; K. Krombie, Senior Editor at TCA, both of whom covered the event on the ground; and Jonathan Campion, who competed for Team GB in the Alysh Wrestling.
From Transit to Capital: What Investors Were Looking for in Kazakhstan at Astana Finance Days
On the second day of Astana Finance Days, Kazakhstan was trying to answer the question that follows almost every discussion about new railways, power plants, data centers, and factories: where will the money come from? International banks, asset managers, and stock exchanges gathered in Astana, and the conversation quickly reached a point – foreign capital is interested in the country, but its domestic stock market remains too small for many large investors.
From Transit to Transactions
The title of the first major discussion of the second day – “From Transit to Transactions” – neatly captured the idea.
Kazakhstan already earns money from its position between China and Europe and is investing billions in railways, ports, and energy infrastructure. Now Astana wants financial transactions to move alongside the freight, and some of that capital to remain in the country.
The Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC), where the forum is being held, was created partly for that purpose. It is a separate financial jurisdiction within Kazakhstan, with its own regulator, court, and legal framework based on the principles of English common law. According to the center, by June 2026 its platform had helped attract $25.3 billion in investment to Kazakhstan, while the number of registered companies had exceeded 5,800.
But the presence of international companies does not necessarily mean they are ready to invest.
Jad Ellawn, Managing Partner for the Middle East at Brookfield, one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers, began with three conditions.
“The fundamental principles for an investor looking to enter a country consist of three components. First is having the proper legislation. Second is respect for capital: a country needs to demonstrate that capital is important to it not only domestically, but beyond its borders. Third is scalability,” he said. “In addition to energy resources, Kazakhstan has many other natural resources, and your country is the ninth-largest country in the world. This means you have many potential industries that you could develop, unlike the Gulf.”
Yilmaz Kocagoz of Goldman Sachs, one of the largest U.S. investment banks, looked at Kazakhstan through the lens of manufacturing and infrastructure.
“For Kazakhstan to diversify its economy beyond commodities, it needs to develop manufacturing and infrastructure,” he said.
Kocagoz also pointed to Kazakhstan’s relatively low government debt burden. For an investor, that means a smaller share of the country’s future revenues is already committed to servicing a large public debt.
Nurlan Zhakupov, the CEO of Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna, put a price tag on the country’s investment program: more than 100 projects worth $105 billion.
“We see demand from local businesses and enormous interest from foreign partners. We are also seeing growing consumption of electricity and natural gas, as well as demand for the transportation of electricity, oil, gas, and petroleum products,” Zhakupov said.
He ended with an invitation: “Overall, Kazakhstan currently has a good business climate, and now is a good time to enter the Kazakh economy.”
The next discussion in the same building helped explain why that does not always happen.
International Capital Is Available. Stocks Are Scarce
In the AIX Trading Hall, the conversation shifted from investment projects to Kazakhstan’s capital market itself.
The Astana International Exchange (AIX) is the AIFC’s stock exchange, where companies and public-sector entities issue shares and bonds. By mid-2026, securities from nearly 200 issuers were traded on the exchange, while around $15 billion had been raised through AIX since its launch.
David Sol represented FTSE Russell, one of the world’s leading providers of stock market indexes. Its classifications are used by international asset managers, meaning that the category assigned to a country can affect which investment funds are willing or able to invest there.
Kazakhstan is currently classified as a frontier market – a category generally used for smaller capital markets with fewer investable companies and relatively limited trading volumes.
It is the only country in Central Asia or the South Caucasus included in either MSCI’s or FTSE Russell’s equity-market classifications, with both placing it in the frontier category. Kazakhstan also meets FTSE Russell’s qualitative criteria for Secondary Emerging Market status.
The next step is emerging-market status.
“Kazakhstan is currently classified as a frontier market. What Kazakhstan is missing right now to move to the next level is liquidity. We do not see sufficient volumes, and market capitalization remains relatively small,” Sol said.
Liquidity is the ability to buy or sell a large block of securities quickly without significantly moving the price. For a small investor, the difference may barely be noticeable. For a fund managing billions of dollars, it is critical.
“This is important for international asset managers, for banks, for advisers who either track indexes as passive investors or use an index to improve their performance,” Sol explained. “If you want to move to emerging-market status, then you need to attract a completely different investor base.”
Kazakhstan’s figures look better than they did several years ago. Elena Bakhmutova, Chair of the Council of the Association of Financiers of Kazakhstan, said the total value of listed shares had more than doubled in four years. Foreign investors have also become more active buyers of government securities.
But she returned to the same obstacle: “The turnover ratio for shares and bonds is not particularly high. Liquidity still leaves much to be desired.”
Why Businesses Stay Behind Closed Doors
A little later, the people who bring companies to the market every day took the floor. Talgat Salikhov, head of Kazakhstan-based investment bank Teniz Capital, does not believe the country lacks businesses large enough to list.
“Kazakhstan has enough medium-sized and large companies that could easily enter the equity market. The issue is different: owners do not want publicity, and they do not want transparency,” he said. “There are several reasons for this. Some do not want to lose control, while others cannot agree with the market on price.”
Going public means disclosing financial statements, accepting new shareholders, and regularly explaining corporate decisions to the market. For many Kazakh business owners, the benefits are still not compelling enough.
“The fundamental reason is that, today, the economics of remaining closed provide advantages. There are not enough incentives for businesses to open up,” Salikhov said.
One option under discussion is to link tax incentives to free float – the proportion of a company’s shares that is actually available for public trading.
Salikhov pointed to Saudi Arabia: “The Saudi Exchange tells its participants directly that if they want preferences in major government procurement, they need to enter the equity market. If you want higher limits in subsidized government financing – enter the equity market. These are effective measures that are already working in other countries.”
Sergey Lukyanov of Freedom Finance argued that Kazakhstan does not necessarily have to wait for international index providers to move it into the next category. According to his figures, trading in shares and other equity instruments on AIX and the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE), the country’s two main exchanges, amounted to around $1.5 billion in 2025.
“There is another way – developing the market using our own resources,” Lukyanov said.
One potential source is pension savings. Roman Lokhov of European investment firm Roemer Capital argued that placing part of these assets under private management could bring investors into the market that are more willing to buy equities and corporate bonds.
Chinese Capital Is Already Taking Another Route
After the discussion about investors, attention in the AIX Trading Hall turned to China.
Representatives of AIX, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing – the operator of the Hong Kong stock exchange – and CICC, one of China’s largest investment banks, appeared on the same stage.
Here, the discussion was no longer about whether Chinese capital would come to Kazakhstan, but about which financial instruments could be used to attract it.
Kazakh borrowers have begun tapping Chinese markets directly. At the center of the discussion were Panda bonds – yuan-denominated bonds issued by foreign companies and governments in mainland China – and Dim Sum bonds, yuan-denominated securities issued outside mainland China, particularly in Hong Kong.
The connection is no longer theoretical. Kazakh issuers are using AIX, Hong Kong, and China’s interbank market to raise capital. The exchanges are now discussing how to make such placements more regular and facilitate investor access between the markets.
That brought the forum back to the morning discussion about transforming Kazakhstan from a route between East and West into a place where the transactions themselves are structured.
The same idea was then applied to individual industries.
The Aircraft Stays in the Sky, the Deal Comes to Astana
In Al Farabi Hall, bankers and stock indexes gave way to airlines, airports, and aircraft owners.
Ibrahim Canliel, CEO of Air Astana Group, explained the market’s appeal through geography. Air Astana Group comprises Kazakhstan’s largest airline, Air Astana, and its low-cost carrier FlyArystan.
“Geographic location is our major advantage over competitors in the industry. Our company is the leader in Central Asia and the Caucasus in terms of transportation. Capacity in these regions has tripled in recent years. That is why we now see even greater potential in transit markets and cooperation with the Caucasus, Europe, India, and China.”
More traffic means more aircraft. Airlines do not necessarily have to buy them outright: a large share of the global commercial fleet belongs to specialized leasing companies that rent aircraft to carriers under long-term agreements.
At the forum, participants announced a transaction for Kazakhstan’s cargo airline Jupiter Jet with a U.S. lessor. The AIFC helped structure the terms and negotiations.
For the financial center, the significance goes beyond a single aircraft. Astana wants to build a platform through which aircraft financing and leasing transactions can be structured for the wider region.
At the same roundtable, the AIFC presented its first report on aviation finance in Central Asia and the Caucasus and signed an agreement with the Development Bank of Kazakhstan on SAF projects – sustainable aviation fuel, a lower-carbon alternative to conventional jet fuel.
From Aircraft to Songs
After the aviation discussion, the logic of the forum’s second day became clearer.
The AIFC is trying to create markets in areas where Kazakhstan previously had few established mechanisms for attracting private capital.
In the technology hall, Nurkhat Kushimov, General Manager of Binance Kazakhstan, said that for some younger customers, crypto assets are becoming their first introduction to finance.
“Historically, a customer would first enter traditional finance and only later discover crypto assets. We are now seeing the opposite trend: for a new generation of users, crypto is increasingly becoming the first point of entry into the financial system,” he said.
The discussion then moved on to payments made by AI-based software.
Jianbin Huang, founder of CodeCoin, suggested that such programs could eventually select services and pay for them on a user’s behalf. For banks, this creates a new question: how can they establish who gave the software permission to spend the money?
“For this, reliable digital identification is essential – without it, full participation in the digital financial environment is impossible,” Huang said.
A few halls away, music itself was becoming an investment asset.
The AIFC Tech Hub and Kazakhstan’s ōzen agreed to develop a platform for tokenizing music royalties – future payments to authors and rights holders when their work is streamed or otherwise used.
The idea is straightforward: part of the future income from a song can be divided into digital units and sold to investors. The creator receives money earlier; the investor receives a claim on a share of future revenue.
At Creative Pitch Day, 19 projects from more than 100 applications in film, music, gaming, and digital content made it to meetings with investors.
Putting a Price on Carbon
Toward the end of the forum, another market appeared on AIX itself.
The exchange is launching trading in carbon credits issued under the international Verified Carbon Standard.
One Verified Carbon Unit represents one metric ton of greenhouse gas emissions reduced or removed, measured in carbon dioxide equivalent. A project that achieves and verifies such reductions can generate credits that can then be purchased and retired by businesses seeking to offset part of their emissions.
AIX’s carbon platform has been operating since 2025 and already works with renewable energy certificates. It is now adding exchange-based trading in internationally recognized carbon credits.
The AIFC is also developing a framework for financing water infrastructure.
Together with international organizations, the AIFC is developing Kazakhstan’s first “blue” taxonomy – a classification system defining projects related to water security. Guidelines for blue bonds are expected to follow, providing a framework through which private investors could finance water supply, wastewater treatment, and modernization of water infrastructure.
By evening, it was easier to understand why Chinese bonds, aircraft, cryptocurrencies, music, water, and carbon had all ended up on the agenda of a single financial forum.
Astana is trying to do the same thing with very different assets: create rules, build a marketplace and a financial instrument, and then bring investors to them.
Behind all of it was the same attempt: to turn things that were once difficult to sell to investors into financial assets they can understand.
For more on our special coverage of Astana Finance Days, click here.
Middle Corridor Freight Grows, but Eastbound Cargo Lags
Container traffic is growing along the Middle Corridor from China and Central Asia toward Europe, but the route is far less busy in the opposite direction. In the first eight months of 2026, about 80% of container traffic moved westward and only 20% eastward. Operators are now looking for goods in Europe and Türkiye that can be shipped back across the Caspian Sea and Kazakhstan toward Central Asia and China. Container traffic totaled 53,574 TEU along the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, also known as the Middle Corridor, in January–August. One TEU is equivalent to a standard 20-foot container. During the same period last year, the figure was 48,326 TEU, meaning traffic increased by 11%. But the flows were highly uneven. According to ADY Express, 42,642 TEU moved from east to west, compared with just 10,932 TEU in the opposite direction – a ratio of almost four to one. Interest in the route increased sharply after 2022, when companies began looking for additional ways to move goods between China and Europe without transiting Russia. Over the past several years, participants in the Middle Corridor have focused on increasing shipments from China. New train services have been introduced, while countries along the route have invested in railways, terminals, and Caspian ports. Chinese freight has grown, but there is still not enough cargo for the return journey. For transport operators, the issue comes down to finances. Once containers reach Europe, they need to be used again or repositioned. If there is cargo for the return journey, the equipment generates revenue in both directions. Without it, operators can face the cost of moving empty equipment. The 80%-to-20% split, however, does not establish how many containers actually make the return journey without cargo. Railway companies themselves are now acknowledging the shortage of eastbound cargo. “For this, backhaul freight is necessary,” Emil Mammadov, Adviser to the Chairman of Azerbaijan Railways, said at the Black Sea and Caspian Freight Forum 2026 in Baku. According to Mammadov, attracting cargo from Europe would help increase freight volumes, optimize transportation costs, and allow at least some containers to be returned to their countries of origin. Until now, the route has been promoted more actively in China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Türkiye. European companies have received less attention. Railway operators are now looking for customers at the western end of the corridor as well. A shipment from Türkiye showed what such a return journey could look like. In May, KTZ Express and Pasifik Eurasia dispatched a train from Izmir to China carrying household refrigerators. Fifty 40-foot containers crossed the Caspian Sea, traveled through Kazakhstan, and continued into China via the Altynkol border station. For now, such shipments remain limited. The Chinese side continues to push for more westbound traffic. On September 9, Azerbaijan Railways held talks with Shanghai International Port Group and Lianyungang Port on expanding shipments of Chinese goods through Kazakhstan, across the Caspian, and through Azerbaijan toward Europe. ADY Express also reported that 265 container block trains operated along the Middle Corridor in January–August 2026. The train count does not establish how fully those services were loaded or how much equipment returned empty. Kazakhstan occupies the central section of this route. Cargo from China crosses the country by rail, reaches Aktau or Kuryk, and is then shipped across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan. From there, it continues through Georgia toward Türkiye or the Black Sea. Kazakhstan is investing heavily in railways and its Caspian ports. In February, the World Bank approved an $846 million guarantee intended to mobilize $1.41 billion in financing for a major railway project along the Middle Corridor. The World Bank says the project is expected to contribute to tripling freight operations and halving end-to-end transit times along the corridor by 2030. Mammadov identified automotive products as potential eastbound cargo. He said attracting European shippers would depend on the transit times and service standards the corridor could offer.
Kazakhstan Seeks Oil Export Alternatives After Latest CPC Disruption
A drone incident near the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal outside Novorossiysk briefly halted oil loading on September 8, again highlighting Kazakhstan’s dependence on its main export route through Russia. Astana is seeking to expand alternatives, but the difference in volumes remains enormous. According to Kazakhstan’s Energy Ministry, the country exported 64.8 million tons of oil through CPC in 2025. The ministry puts shipments via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline at 1.2 million tons annually.
Azerbaijan has said it is ready to receive up to 2.2 million tons of Kazakh oil through BTC annually, although KazMunayGas expects shipments of up to 1.6 million tons in 2026. Even this higher figure would be only around 3% of the volume Kazakhstan exported through CPC last year.
The Caspian route allows oil from Kazakhstan to bypass Russian territory entirely. Crude is shipped to the port of Aktau, carried by tanker across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan, and then transported through the BTC pipeline via Georgia to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
However, the logistics are more complicated than direct pipeline transportation. A substantial increase in exports could require additional tanker capacity and improvements to transport infrastructure on both sides of the Caspian.
Kazakhstan also exports oil eastward to China. Another alternative is the Atyrau-Samara pipeline, although it feeds crude into Russia’s pipeline system and does not reduce reliance on Russian transit.
The latest incident temporarily stopped loading at two single-point moorings, the offshore facilities used to load crude onto tankers.
Kazakhstan’s Energy Ministry said inspections of the equipment and vessels found no issues affecting continued loading. It reported no environmental impact. Loading resumed, and CPC imposed no restrictions on accepting crude from Kazakh shippers.
CPC operations had already been interrupted several times in 2026 following attacks in the terminal area.
The disruptions have added up. Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov estimated that incidents affecting CPC in January and July had caused about 3.5 million tons of lost production. He said Kazakhstan would have to lower its 2026 oil production forecast from 98 million tons to around 96 million tons.
The problem for Astana is the scale of its dependence. CPC connects Kazakhstan’s largest oilfields to the Black Sea and accounted for approximately 82% of the country’s 78.7 million tons of oil exports in 2025.
Even doubling or tripling shipments across the Caspian would leave CPC dominant. Kazakhstan can gradually spread its exports across several routes, but the alternatives cannot currently replace its main export channel. For more on our special coverage, click here.
Astana Finance Days: From BlackRock to Mining and Data Centers
In a trading hall in Astana, BlackRock was explaining why investors have become more cautious. A few floors away, geologists were pitching 23 mining projects, while financiers debated how many megawatts the next wave of artificial intelligence will require. That was how the first day of Astana Finance Days unfolded, as Kazakhstan brought together financial groups managing more than $26 trillion in assets – and sought to show them where that money could be put to work in Central Asia. The ninth Astana Finance Days is taking place on September 9–10 at the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC), Kazakhstan’s special financial jurisdiction with its own regulator and a court system based on English common law principles. 
According to the organizers, around 8,000 participants from 90 countries registered for the forum. Institutions represented include BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Capital Group, Brookfield, Rothschild & Co., Hong Kong Investment Corporation, and IFC Asset Management Company. The stated $26 trillion refers to the combined assets under management of participating firms worldwide – not investment pledged to Kazakhstan. 
More concrete signals emerged on the sidelines. Meshal Jaber AlFaras, Janus Henderson Investors’ head of the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, said the investment group is considering direct investments in Kazakhstan and plans to expand its presence in the country. Janus Henderson manages around $500 billion in assets. AlFaras did not disclose potential projects or investment amounts. A New Price for Risk One of the first day’s most prominent discussions took place at the Astana International Exchange (AIX), the AIFC’s stock exchange. Ben Powell, Chief Investment Strategist for the Asia-Pacific region at the BlackRock Investment Institute, spoke about how geopolitics is reshaping capital flows. “Today, we are in a structurally new regime – moving into a more complicated world where geopolitical fragmentation is intensifying, alliances are breaking down, and international relationships are changing. Of course, this affects investors. They need to completely rethink their approaches to investing,” Powell said. Higher inflation and interest rates, he continued, are changing attitudes toward risk. For smaller emerging markets, that means greater scrutiny of currency stability, regulation, and liquidity. A few halls away, that global discussion was already turning into pitches for specific mineral projects. From the Geological Map to the Investor Fifteen companies brought 23 mining projects to Astana Finance Days. Most are still at the exploration stage. In the industry, such companies are known as juniors. They search for mineral deposits and try to demonstrate that the resources they discover can eventually be mined profitably. For an ordinary bank, the risk is high: a promising area on a geological map does not yet guarantee a working mine. At the forum, companies briefly pitched their projects before moving into individual negotiations. More than ten Kazakh and international investors and strategic partners attended the pitch session. The Junior Mining Platform, launched this spring, is intended to turn this search for capital into a permanent mechanism. Private investors take on early geological risk; as reserves are confirmed and technical uncertainty declines, larger mining groups, lenders, international financial institutions, and eventually public markets can enter the project. 
Organizers did not disclose how much funding the participating companies were seeking or whether any financing agreements were reached on the first day. According to the AIFC, about 65% of Kazakhstan’s territory remains geologically underexplored. For a country with major deposits of copper, uranium, gold, and other minerals, that means investors often have to finance the search and evaluation of deposits before they can finance extraction. Solidcore Resources added another link to that chain: processing. The company presented Ertis POX, a pressure-oxidation complex under construction in the Pavlodar region. The facility is designed to process refractory gold-bearing concentrates, including material from Solidcore’s own mines and potentially from other producers in Kazakhstan and the wider region. The project has already secured $600 million in financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and a syndicate of international commercial banks. “A Chip You Can’t Plug In” In the discussion about artificial intelligence, the unit of measurement was no longer the dollar – or even the processor. “Investing in AI Infrastructure: The Megawatt as the New Unit of Account” was the title of a presentation by Nikita Selivanov, Director of Global Markets at AGS. Behind that formula lies a physical constraint on the AI boom: buying thousands of cutting-edge processors is not enough. They have to be connected to the power grid and cooled around the clock. “A chip you can’t plug in is meaningless,” Selivanov said. By his estimate, creating one megawatt of computing capacity requires roughly $10 million to $15 million in investment. The AI investment race therefore extends far beyond processors to power plants, grids, transformers, copper, cooling systems, and data center construction. For Kazakhstan, this brings the discussion back to familiar territory: energy and raw materials. The country has major uranium reserves, plans to build nuclear power plants, and is simultaneously expanding its digital infrastructure. Selivanov pointed to the possibility of locating new power generation closer to major computing facilities. The connection between seemingly separate sessions at the forum was almost physical: new data centers need electricity; power infrastructure needs metals; and producing those metals begins with the same exploration projects being pitched to investors a few floors away. From a Concert Ticket to Grain in an Elevator At a session on tokenization, speakers initially explained a complex financial technology through the example of a concert. Alexander Kruglov, Chief Commercial Officer of Wallet in Telegram and a partner at The Open Platform, asked the audience to imagine the chain between a musician and the person sitting in the concert hall. Between them, he said, there may be six to eight intermediaries – managers, promoters, ticketing services, and venues. An artist could instead issue digital tokens in advance, with demand helping indicate which city would make sense for a concert. If necessary, the holder could then resell that right to someone else. Seh Huan Kiat, Director of FinTech at Phillip Securities, brought the discussion back to financial markets. “First, tokenization creates a new way of distributing financial products and makes assets tradable that previously were not. Second, portability. The programmability of tokens allows financial services to be used beyond individual ecosystems and changes traditional distribution chains,” he said. Seh described automation as the third shift. Stablecoins – digital tokens typically designed to track the value of a conventional currency or another reference asset – and AI agents, he said, could automate parts of the process of using and managing financial products. Kazakhstan has already found a distinctly physical commodity for this technology: grain. In June, the AIFC regulator licensed Commodity Chain to operate a platform for trading tokenized real-world assets. The first application is intended to focus on agricultural products, including grain stored at modernized elevators. In the physical world, the grain remains in storage. Sensors and other monitoring systems would track its quantity and condition, while rights linked to the commodity would receive a digital representation. The tokenized assets could then be used as collateral for short-term financing. But the technology leaves a very traditional financial risk intact: investors still need to know whether the grain is really in the elevator and what happens to the collateral if the borrower fails to repay. Five Markets Around One Table While mines, megawatts, and tokens were being discussed in the open halls, financial regulators and market participants from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Georgia gathered around one table to confront a different problem: the relatively small size and fragmentation of their national markets. Different licenses, rules, and financial infrastructure make it harder for an investor to operate across several countries. Representatives of international financial organizations and development institutions also joined the discussion. Participants discussed regulatory cooperation, information exchange, and ways to make cross-border financial services easier. But the AIFC regulator, the Astana Financial Services Authority (AFSA), did sign a memorandum with the National Bank of Georgia. It establishes a framework for working toward mutual market access in selected areas, including capital markets and asset management, as well as cross-border listings of securities. The practical arrangements still have to be developed under the legal and regulatory requirements of both jurisdictions. Astana Finance Days continues on September 10. For more on our special coverage of Astana Finance Days, click here.
Short Stories from the Region
