Investment - The Times Of Central Asia

Viewing results 1 - 6 of 79

Alatau City

Kazakhstan Signs Alatau City Agreements With $1.3 Billion Investment Potential

Kazakhstan has signed nine agreements with international partners in London to support the development of Alatau City in Almaty Region. The government estimates their combined investment potential at $1.3 billion. The agreements cover infrastructure construction and the development of education and healthcare. The agreements were signed at the Alatau City Investment Roundtable, which launched Kazakhstan’s European investment tour. The delegation was led by Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev. Representatives of more than 70 companies, banks, and investment funds attended the meeting, including JPMorgan Chase, BP, AstraZeneca, and Brookfield Asset Management. Plans under consideration include opening educational institutions in Alatau City with the participation of the University of Exeter, Brighton College, and Repton Group. Cooperation with AstraZeneca and Crescent Meditours covers healthcare projects and scientific exchanges. Discussions on financing energy, transport, and utility infrastructure were held with the London Stock Exchange, Société Générale, J.P. Morgan, Brookfield, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Alatau City has a special legal regime established by a constitutional law dated May 8, 2026, which allows principles of the law of England and Wales to be applied to certain legal relationships. Meetings with international law firms addressed the establishment of an investment court, international arbitration, public-private partnerships, and digital asset regulation. Alatau is located near Almaty, along transport routes connecting Kazakhstan and China. The project envisions the development of industrial, logistics, business, and residential districts. According to the government, the city’s investment portfolio includes 67 projects worth approximately $6.9 billion, with an estimated 55,000 jobs to be created. Another 28 engineering and transport infrastructure projects, valued at 35.3 billion tenge, cover the construction of roads and electricity, gas, and water supply networks. Following the London meetings, the Kazakh delegation will continue its investment discussions in Germany. Alatau City was also presented to American investors at Kazakhstan Finance Day in New York. Discussions there focused on the city’s special legal regime, financial instruments, and private capital participation in its development.

State of the Nation

Tokayev Unveils $14 Billion Construction Plan in Kazakhstan State of the Nation Address

Kazakhstan plans to spend 6.5 trillion tenge (about $14.3 billion) from its National Fund on infrastructure projects by 2029 and eliminate its electricity shortage in the same period, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev announced in his annual State of the Nation Address on October 28. The president also outlined plans to accelerate nuclear power plant construction, expand transport routes between China and Europe, and establish a separate court for investors in the new city of Alatau. $14 Billion for Infrastructure Tokayev proposed declaring 2027 a year of large-scale construction and launching a nationwide program covering roads, airports, railway stations, and public facilities. The government is expected to allocate approximately 6.5 trillion tenge from the National Fund by the end of 2029, including 1.5 trillion tenge ($3.3 billion) for social projects in the remaining months of 2026 and the first two months of 2027. The program envisages building around 70 healthcare facilities and approximately 50 education, sports, and cultural facilities. Plans also include extending gas supplies and clean drinking water to underserved communities. Tokayev said public funding should help attract private investment rather than finance the entire program. The spending plans raise questions about the use of Kazakhstan's accumulated oil revenues. The National Fund was established in part to protect the economy from fluctuations in commodity prices, but its resources are regularly used to meet budgetary needs. Tokayev said Kazakhstan must balance preserving financial reserves for future generations with investing in modern infrastructure. He argued that public spending should deliver economic and social returns. Kazakhstan Aims to Eliminate Electricity Deficit Tokayev acknowledged that Kazakhstan's electricity production is insufficient to meet the needs of its growing economy, particularly as the country seeks to expand industry and build data centers. According to the national grid operator KEGOC, Kazakhstan generated 123.1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2025, while consuming 124.6 billion. The shortfall of approximately 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours was covered by net imports. The president set a target of achieving a sustained surplus of electricity production over domestic consumption by 2029. Tokayev criticized the longstanding practice of purchasing expensive electricity from neighboring countries during winter peaks in demand and subsequently returning electricity in summer at substantially lower prices. "That's quite a simple little 'business,' and it's been going on for decades," Tokayev remarked. He also pointed to delays in bringing new generating capacity online in Turkestan, Kyzylorda, Almaty, and Ekibastuz, as well as a shortage of qualified energy specialists. To meet the 2029 target, Kazakhstan will need to build new power stations and modernize existing facilities. Tokayev called for further development of coal-fired generation alongside renewable energy, particularly solar power. Nuclear Power Plans Tokayev said construction of the Balkhash nuclear power plant could begin in 2027. He also proposed accelerating preparations for an agreement on the Moyynkum nuclear power plant. Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom is leading the Balkhash project, while China National Nuclear Corporation has been selected as the main contractor for the second plant. However, the first reactor at Balkhash is not expected to...

Central Asia-U.S. Relations

Opinion: Central Asia Is More Than Minerals

For years, Central Asia was one of those regions that Washington periodically rediscovered and then forgot. Officials visited and announced new initiatives, but the relationship hardly changed. That is no longer the case. Many pundits see the current surge of American interest in Central Asia through the lens of transactional foreign policy: nowadays the focus has been on critical minerals, supply-chain security, and competition with China. Valid so far as it goes, this approach misses the larger story. Central Asia is not suddenly important because of its minerals or because Washington has decided that it is. Increasingly, Washington must pay attention to Central Asia because the region itself is changing, and in largely positive directions. Over three decades, American investors largely dismissed the region as too poorly governed and too distant. Now the region itself is working to change the conditions that made it unattractive. The transformation is far from complete, but it is real. When the Central Asian states emerged from the Soviet Union in 1991, they faced grave disadvantages. State enterprises dominated their economies, and they fell short of Western investors’ expectations in both the rule of law and transparency. While such problems have not disappeared, they are everywhere being worked on. Uzbekistan provides the clearest example. Since 2017, Tashkent has undertaken reforms to liberalize its economy and improve the environment for private investment. The World Bank now describes Uzbekistan as one of the world's top reformers. Kazakhstan has also built more sophisticated financial and regulatory institutions. Its goal is to position itself as a regional hub for logistics, energy, and finance. The World Bank's new 2026–31 country strategy emphasizes a "business-ready Kazakhstan," with greater private-sector participation, improved infrastructure, and better natural-resource management. The pace of change in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan has been slower, for understandable reasons. Kyrgyzstan’s early political reforms long left the government rudderless, Tajikistan endured a five-year civil war, and Turkmenistan was stymied by Russia’s total control of its gas industry. Now these countries, too, are belatedly advancing. Central Asia has not become Switzerland. Corruption, political interference, and governance problems still afflict the countries’ economies, and the OECD continues to identify these as important obstacles to investment. The question is not whether Central Asia has solved these problems but whether it has changed enough to become investable. The answer increasingly is yes, it has. Moscow's offensive in Ukraine accelerated changes Washington had sought for decades. Secondary sanctions compelled Central Asians to develop new commercial avenues not subject to international restrictions. While Central Asian governments maintain important relations with Russia, they all seek pragmatic alternatives that reduce their former reliance on Moscow. The countries are expanding regional cooperation while reaching across the Caspian to the South Caucasus and beyond. The resulting Middle Corridor promises direct access to global markets. The measure of its success will be whether Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan gain trans-Caspian pipelines to transport their resources directly to Europe. In short, Central Asia is doing what Washington has long wanted it to do: become more...

C5+1

U.S. Links Trusted Digital Infrastructure to Investment at C5+1 Conference

Stronger cybersecurity and trusted digital infrastructure could encourage greater U.S. investment in Central Asia, Mark Cameron said in Astana on September 29. Cameron, deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, was speaking at the C5+1 conference on artificial intelligence. He said data centers and trusted infrastructure would give American companies greater confidence to invest and expand their cooperation across the region. “The strongest house is built on the firmest foundation,” Cameron told reporters, linking cybersecurity to the development of advanced AI. Cameron said Washington sees private companies as central to the process, with government programs helping create conditions for investment and technological cooperation. “The United States has the deep belief that companies, given the opportunity, will find great solutions and new opportunities that many of us have never even considered before,” Cameron said. He said Washington has committed $5 million through CRDF Global for cybersecurity and digital-sector assistance. The support covers incident response, critical infrastructure protection, financial sector security, and cybersecurity policy. The C5+1 format brings together the United States and the five Central Asian countries. The conference comes ahead of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s planned business delegation to Uzbekistan in mid-October, involving executives from more than 100 American companies alongside talks with the region’s foreign ministers. Kazakhstan Sets Out Its AI Development Model Kazakhstan’s vice minister of artificial intelligence and digital development, Bakhtiyar Mukhametkaliyev, described the development of an AI economy as a five-layer process. Energy comes first, followed by access to chips and graphics processing units (GPUs), information systems, high-quality data, and finally AI agents. Countries that attempt to deploy AI agents before building the infrastructure and data beneath them, Mukhametkaliyev said, are unlikely to realize their full economic value. He also framed data centers as a way for Kazakhstan to convert its energy and resource base into higher-value digital capacity. Mukhametkaliyev stressed that Kazakhstan does not intend to build its emerging AI ecosystem solely for the domestic market. He said the infrastructure should also help neighboring countries develop their AI industries and improve connectivity. He also pointed to drones, space technologies, startups, and workforce reskilling as areas where digitalization could create new markets and occupations. Kazakhstan’s ties with U.S. technology companies are also expanding. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is scheduled to make his first visit to Kazakhstan on October 23, as the country develops data centers and NVIDIA-based computing infrastructure. Regional Plans for AI Development Kyrgyzstan focused on practical AI applications, human oversight, education, and local-language models. Niyazaly Bazarbaev, adviser to the minister of digital development and innovative technologies, said Kyrgyz and other Central Asian languages remain insufficiently represented in existing AI systems. He discussed work involving a Kyrgyz-language corpus of roughly five million words and efforts to prepare the school curriculum for an AI-driven economy. Tajikistan presented AI as a presidential priority. Hakim Ismoilzoda, first deputy director of the Agency for Innovation and Digital Technologies, highlighted Tajikistan’s initiatives at the United Nations on AI and its safe, secure,...

Astana Finance Days 2026

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...

Banking

Uzbekistan Pitches Decades of Tax Breaks to Financial Firms

Uzbekistan is offering qualifying financial firms nearly half a century of tax exemptions to set up in Tashkent. The goal is to attract private capital into an economy where state-owned banks still control most banking assets. On September 10, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev appointed his daughter, Saida Mirziyoyeva, to head the planned Tashkent International Financial Centre, Reuters reported. She has led the presidential administration since 2025. Mirziyoyev announced the project at June’s Tashkent International Investment Forum, promising free capital movement alongside tax incentives. Its legal framework would draw on English common law principles, as is the case with Kazakhstan’s Astana International Financial Centre. Who Gets the Tax Breaks? Under the founding law, qualifying participants would receive income and social tax exemptions on financial services income until January 1, 2076. Eligibility requires an actual economic presence in the center and compliance with its rules. The income incentives exclude members of multinational groups with annual revenues of at least €750 million in two of the preceding four fiscal years. Those firms face a domestic top-up tax. The offer is therefore less generous for large multinational groups. A global bank would need a commercial reason to enter Uzbekistan beyond the prospect of a lower tax bill. Most of the foreign businesses operating in Uzbekistan are already concentrated in Tashkent. Almost 63% of the country’s foreign-invested enterprises were based in the capital as of June 1, 2026. Financial firms entering the city would therefore have an existing customer base to pursue, although the numbers alone reveal little about demand for particular services. The domestic banking market does offer scope for competition. In its 2026 assessment, the IMF reported that nine state-owned commercial banks accounted for 63% of banking assets. It also noted delays in privatizing two large banks and urged the authorities to withdraw directed and preferential lending. The center could attract private lenders and help more Uzbek businesses obtain loans. However, simply moving existing deals there to reduce tax bills would do little to expand access to credit. Astana’s Head Start Kazakhstan has operated its financial center since 2018. Its AIFC Court sits outside the national judicial system and uses procedures based on English common law. Businesses can also agree to bring disputes there even when those disputes originate outside the center. The court works directly with Kazakhstan’s authorities to enforce its judgments, and says its first ruling resulted in full payment through private bailiffs. That gives prospective users a concrete example of how a commercial judgment can lead to the recovery of a debt. Uzbekistan’s law likewise provides for an independent commercial court and nationwide recognition of its final judgments. It requires judgments to be published within 30 days, subject to limited confidentiality protections. For lenders, that could reduce uncertainty about committing money to an unfamiliar market. Tashkent would still need to establish a record of decisions and enforcement comparable to the experience available in Astana. The law allows 12 months to adopt essential operating rules, extendable by six months. Activation then requires...