KZBlog

As has been widely reported, Kazakhstan wants to be one of the 50 most competitive countries in the world. My wife and I often joke about this when we get bad service. For example, when the workmen came to hook up our cable TV, they were late and very drunk. We complained and they got very aggressive, very quickly, threatened to leave several times, and after we invited them to come in and get to work several times, they did in fact leave. Competitive?

Well apparently all that hustling and bustling accounted for nothing: World Economic Forum, Kazakhstan went from 51st to 56th place. I think Borat will be less of an embarassment than being ranked below Mauritas and Costa Rica and just above Panama!

However, the press release has all good things to say, confusing many a reader (including me–for about 1 hour this entry stood showing an improvement which you may have caught):

Boosted by its natural resource wealth, it experienced a major improvement in its macroeconomy, thanks to its significant government budget surplus, low debt-GDP ratio, high savings rate and a considerably reduced interest rate spread, possibly reflecting more financial market efficiency or less perceived lending risk. It also saw improvements in market efficiency, rising 8 places to rank 44, boosted by less red tape and more competition in the goods markets, but still impeded by the prevalence of trade barriers and still relatively underdeveloped or unsophisticated financial markets. The country also benefits
from flexible labour markets.

Kazakhstan press release here in PDF format

So perhaps this is a call out for politicians and businesses to start paying attention to the litte guys, those of us trying to get our cable hooked up, or the heating to be turned on before the 15th of October (Dear Kazakhs, is the 15th of October some kind of magical date? Did Timurlane swear he would rise again if the heat got turned on before then? It’s colder in Astana than Almaty, why should the heat get turned on in both cities at the same time? What if there’s a cold freeze in September?). One of the big issues here, in my opinion, is that businesses don’t engage in marginally profitable activities. More than one businessman has reported to the government that consumer services, or setting up certain types of financial markets will not produce the huge (multi-million) dollar profits that buying and selling real estate in Georgia, will and thus they see no reason to enagage in small business.

The summary and downloads of the WEF report are here.

Interviews with two of the authors are here