The World Bank (WB) is supporting Kazakhstan’s course towards diversified growth. Over 25 years of cooperation, the WB has provided loans for 46 projects totalling more than $8.1 billion.
In an exclusive interview with The Astana Times, WB Vice President for Europe and Central Asia Cyril Muller said the bank’s partnership with Kazakhstan has been very successful.
Today, the bank portfolio includes 13 projects worth of $3.8 billion.
“The World Bank was focused to develop infrastructure, for instance, in energy, in transport, but also to focus on what we call human development. Kazakhstan is now an upper middle-income country. It is time for us to shift to the constraints or the barriers to Kazakhstan becoming a high-income country. Kazakhstan currently has the ambition to become a high-income country,” he said.
The bank conducted analyses, including the systematic country diagnostic to identify the future areas of cooperation.
Muller also spoke about the 2018 GDP growth forecast, which was revised upward from 2.6 percent to 3.7 percent.
Muller welcomed the Astana International Financial Centre’s (AIFC) ambition to become a regional hub in finance.
As long as economic policies are carefully crafted, and there’s no overspend, the inflationary pressures are within reason, Muller said.
Baker also spoke about the Big Almaty Ring Road project, the IFC-supported public-private partnership (PPP).
“We are very proud of this project. It took a number of years of hard work to come to completion. The public private partnership between the government and private investors is an important way to bring private sector financing into the infrastructure that a country wants to build,” she said.
The IFC intends to participate in other PPP programmes with the Almaty University Hospital.
“We have submitted a proposal, which is now with the Ministry of Healthcare and will then hopefully progress through parliament. We have done PPPs with hospitals in Turkey and we would like to bring that experience to this project. PPP is an important way of crowding in capital, whether it is from other multilateral and development finance institutions or private sector financial sources into infrastructure projects in this country,” she said.
IFC invested around $1.55 billion since 1997, including $300 million in syndicated loans to support the implementation of 61 private sector projects in the financial, gas, mining, agricultural and industrial sectors.
