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Government Resolution No. 868 of 18 October 2024 adopts the Concept of Investment Policy until 2029 as a binding strategic-planning document under Kazakhstan's State Planning System (Article 65 of the Budget Code). It does not itself disburse incentives or designate beneficiaries; rather, it sets the binding policy frame within which subsequent Government Resolutions, ministerial orders, and BDK / DBK lending instruments must operate over the 2024-2029 horizon.
Four structural features make the Concept the load-bearing implementing instrument under the 2021 Law on Industrial Policy:
1. Quantitative FDI target. The Concept sets US$150 billion in cumulative FDI inflows over 2024-2029 — a step-change from the prior plan (the 2022 Concept until 2026, Resolution No. 482) which targeted USD 30bn/year. It also sets a fixed- capital-investment / GDP ratio target of 23-25.1% by 2029, versus 15.1% achieved in 2023. The implied incremental capital-investment gap is approximately 68.2 trillion tenge (~USD 145bn at 2024 exchange rates) over the six-year horizon.
2. DBK 6%/10-year concessional infrastructure-finance regime. The Concept authorises the Development Bank of Kazakhstan to extend concessional lending at 6% interest for a 10-year tenor for the engineering infrastructure (roads, power, water, gas) of new industrial projects. This is a materially below- market product (commercial KZT rates were 15-18% at adoption) and is the principal new fiscal-quasi-fiscal lever introduced by the Concept. It de-risks Western FDI in greenfield REE, uranium, copper, and downstream-processing facilities by socialising the infrastructure CAPEX that would otherwise be loaded onto private equity sponsors.
3. Regional investment headquarters (Investheadquarters). The Concept mandates the creation of regional Investment Headquarters in each of Kazakhstan's 20 oblasts and cities of national significance, modelled on the existing national Investment Headquarters chaired by the Prime Minister. Each regional HQ is given authority to resolve sub-sovereign project bottlenecks (land, utility connections, customs, labour permits) under a one-stop-shop model. This addresses the long-standing FDI complaint that the national Investheadquarters could not reach into oblast-level discretion.
4. National digital investment platform (invest.gov.kz). The Concept mandates the consolidation of the previously fragmented investor-services digital estate into a single national platform under Kazakh Invest, with API integration to e-Government, the State Revenue Committee, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (migration), and Samruk-Energy (utilities). The platform is intended to host the unified investor-issues register administered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Concept also introduces a counter-obligations regime: recipients of state preferences (SEZ status, BDK concessional loans, subsidies under the Law on Industrial Policy) must commit to localisation thresholds, employment targets, and technology-transfer obligations measured by the Single Card of Industrialisation monitoring framework inherited from the 2021 Law on Industrial Policy.
Industrial Policy.** The Concept is the highest-level programmatic instrument operationalising the Law on Industrial Policy's investment-attraction architecture for 2024-2029. It replaces the prior 2022 Concept until 2026 (Resolution No. 482), with a materially expanded FDI ambition (USD 150bn vs. USD 30bn/year) and a new DBK concessional-finance product. Without the 86-VIII ZRK amendment of 21 May 2024 (which refined Article 24 state-support eligibility) and this Concept, the downstream programme-level instruments — the 2025-12-26 Subsoil Code amendments and the 2025-11-06 US-Kazakhstan Critical Minerals MOU — would lack their fiscal-incentive backbone.
The DBK 6%/10-year concessional-infrastructure-finance regime is the lever that allows Western (US, EU, Korea, Japan) REE / uranium / copper JV sponsors to take greenfield Kazakh exposure at competitive after-tax IRRs. Prior to this Concept, Kazakh greenfield projects had to load their own infrastructure CAPEX or rely on ad-hoc state-equity participation via Samruk-Kazyna or Tau-Ken Samruk. The Concept formalises the infrastructure-finance subsidy and signals state willingness to underwrite the long-tail of industrial CAPEX.
bottleneck.** Kazakh FDI complaints recorded in the World Bank Doing Business indicators and the UNCTAD Investment Policy Monitor have consistently centred on oblast-level discretion rather than national-level regulation. The regional HQ structure is a meaningful institutional response and is modelled on the Vietnamese Provincial People's Committee one-stop-shop architecture that proved consequential for Vietnamese FDI inflows in the 2010s.
Concept is adopted under the Budget Code's State Planning System (Article 65), its targets enter the National Development Plan, the Regional Development Programmes, and the Three-Year Republican Budget framework. This binds the Ministry of National Economy and the Ministry of Finance to finance the DBK concessional-lending capitalisation and the regional Investheadquarters operating costs over 2024-2029, reducing the discretion of subsequent governments to unilaterally reverse the architecture.
reform.** The Concept signals an upcoming SEZ-regime reform (efficiency improvements to the existing 13 SEZs + tighter performance criteria), to be implemented through subsequent ministerial orders under the Law on Industrial Policy. This is a watch-item for early 2027.
concessional infrastructure-finance product through end-2025? Adilet records do not yet show the implementing DBK Board resolution authorising the credit-line capitalisation. Follow- up wake-discovery search in 2026-Q3 should look for the DBK Board resolution or a Government Resolution amending DBK's charter to host the product.
all 20 oblasts / cities of national significance? Government reporting suggests phased rollout from end-2024. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs unified-register data — if published — would be the cleanest measure of operational readiness.
National Bank of Kazakhstan and Ministry of Foreign Affairs FDI flow data through 2025-Q4 should be reconciled against the implied USD 25bn/year cumulative path; material deviation would prefigure a Concept amendment.
state preferences for the largest Western FDI sponsors (Kazatomprom JVs with Cameco, Orano, KazAtomProm-Westinghouse) or does it apply mostly to mid-cap recipients? The enforcement-discretion question turns on QazIndustry's monitoring practice under the Single Card of Industrialisation.