KAZAKHSTAN’S GOVERNMENT RESHUFFLED.

President Nursultan Nazarbaev has virtually completed a government reshuffle that follows the October 10 appointment of Nurlan Balgymbaev as prime minister. (See Monitor, October 10) Kazakhstan’s foreign partners will find Foreign Minister Kasymzhomart Tokaev, Defense Minister Muhtar Altynbaev, First Deputy Prime Minister and State Investment Committee chairman Ahmetzhan Yesimov, Finance Minister Aleksandr Pavlov, and Science Minister Vladimir Shkolnik (responsible inter alia for nuclear and space issues) in the same posts. The number of ministries and departments has been reduced for the second time in two years.

Balgymbaev’s successor as head of the Kazakhoil state company, a key post, is Baltabek Kuandykov, hitherto head of the Kazakhstan-Caspyshelf consortium which groups together many of the West’s leading oil and gas companies. The consortium has recently completed a three-year survey of oil and gas resources in Kazakhstan’s offshore sector, where it found immense and previously uncharted deposits. The participating companies have priority rights in the upcoming tender. The ministerial appointments and reappointments substantiate Nazarbaev’s and Balgymbaev’s assurances that the government will continue economic reforms and its all-out encouragement of foreign investment. (International agencies, October 17)

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