Government regulations cause losses to half of Kazakhstan airports

Over a half of Kazakhstan airports incur losses because of excessive state regulation, Tengrinews.kz reports citing chairman of Kazakhstan Competition Protection Agency Bolatbek Kuandykov who sees the solution of the problem in exclusion of civil aviation from the regulated markets. "Basic services of airports are qualified as natural monopolies and regulated markets sector that are subject to state regulation of prices. This has caused 12 out of 21 airports to become unprofitable. The excessive regulation of the airports' activities made most of the airports loss-making," Kuandykov said and suggested to lift the restrictions from the income-generating services of the airports. "We have suggested to lift the restrictions limiting airports profits from non-core activities to 5 percent of the overall profits and to stop qualifying some of airport services (there are 5 of them) as natural monopolies. We also suggest to exclude civil aviation from the list of regulated markets, review the airport rates on regulated services that airports incur losses from," he said. By Renat Tashkinbayev