80 Samruk-Kazyna companies may be privatized in 2014

Around 80 companies that are part of Kazakhstan's Samruk-Kazyna Sovereign Wealth Fund might be privatized in 2014, Tengrinews reports citing the Fund's Chairman Umirzak Shukeyev. "We have chosen around 80 companies that meet the criteria. The list includes 27 companies of KazMunaiGas (national oil and gas company), 34 companies of Kazakh Temir Zholy (national railway company), 11 companies of KazAtomProm (national nuclear company), 2 companies of Kazakhstelekom (national Internet and TV provider), 8 companies of Samruk-Energo (national manager of power assets) and 1 company of KEGOC (Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company)," Shukeyev said at the meeting of Sovereign Wealth Fund. He stressed the list will be adjusted, before it will be passed to the government for final approval. The privatisation is going to start this year. The companies were selected for privatisation by the following criteria: these are state-run companies that duplicate existing private companies in their functions and that have no strategic importance for their market and are not related to ensuring the national security, national defence capacity and public order. Social significance of the companies and social support they render to the population in their current state-run form was another criteria taken into consideration. Before these companies are privatized, Kazakhstan's Anti-Monipoly Agency will have its say: it will have to provide an official conclusion that presence of the state-run companies in the particular market section is unfeasible. By Altynai Zhumzhumina