Kazakhstan in 2015 and into 2016: hopes and headaches*
ALMATY (TCA) — The year 2015 is bound to stay on people’s memories in Kazakhstan as the year everybody expected the curtain to fall – on people’s heads, that is. The current year, with the country’s national currency held by the fortunes of a ghost that keeps refusing to return into its bottle, unless cash flows are restored to durable levels. To allow this to happen, the government has resorted to what remarkably looks like Russia’s notorious stock-for-loans scheme worked out by the tandem Gaidar/Chubais in the mid-1990s. Will it work out this time? Continue reading
