Kazakhstan government instructed to narrow gap between rich and poor

Kazakhstan government has been instructed to work on narrowing the gap between rich and poor, Tengrinews.kz reports. “It is not about out GDP per capita, this is not what's important. What matters is how many poor people we have and what the difference between rich and poor is. And we have a significant difference. I have checked this,” Nazarbayev said at the meeting of the businessmen council. According to him, 36 percent of Kazakhstan’s households (6 million people) have average monthly incomes of over 30 thousand tenge ($200). 55.6 percent (9 million people) have average earnings of 36 thousand tenge ($240) or less. 8 percent of households (1.5 million people) have average incomes of less than 15 thousand tenge ($100) per a person. “I instruct the government to study this issue. Why does the economy work? There is a special global rating, as you know. Our rating is 6 now. The situation gets dangerous if the rating approaches 10,” the President said. Nursultan Nazarbayev suggested businessmen, especially those running large businesses, to consider increasing salaries for their employees. “On the one hand, we have to see to gradually increasing salaries in large companies, in those companies that can afford it without hurting their businesses. But there are companies that will sink if they raise the wages. That’s where the state has to help and we do help. We have social jobs,” he said. By Renat Tashkinbayev