Remove state officials from Samruk-Kazyna Directors Board: Shukeyev

The Chairman of the Board of JSC Samruk-Kazyna Umirzak Shukeyev © flickr.com

Kazakhstan needs to gradually remove all the state officials from the Board of Directors of its national wealth fund, the Chairman of the Board of Samruk-Kazyna Wealth Fund Umirzak Shukeyev said during a meeting in Astana, Tengrinews reports.

"Samruk-Kazyna should become a highly qualified consultant for our companies. We need a fundamental reform of the board of directors, to increase the number of the board members, and ensure a higher level of professionalism and competence of the board members. Most of the board should be made up of independent directors… We need to gradually remove all state officials from the Board of Directors," Shukeyev said.

Shukeyev called this measure one of the key ones in the campaign to transform the Fund. Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev instructions to complete the draft program of transformation of Samruk-Kazyna by September 2014. The transformation plan will have eight main directions, Umirzak Shukeyev said.

We have identified 8 key directions in the Samruk-Kazyna transformation project. They envisage taking a new approach towards investment activities of Samruk-Kazyna, that involves transforming the fund from a passive shareholder into an active investor. We should not just sit and wait and just issue approvals to projects that are submitted to us by our subsidiaries, but we should work to identify new highly-effective, highly-feasible high-tech projects ourselves," he said.

Kazakhstan needs to gradually remove all the state officials from the Board of Directors of its national wealth fund, the Chairman of the Board of Samruk-Kazyna Wealth Fund Umirzak Shukeyev said during a meeting in Astana, Tengrinews reports.

"Samruk-Kazyna should become a highly qualified consultant for our companies. We need a fundamental reform of the board of directors, to increase the number of the board members, and ensure a higher level of professionalism and competence of the board members. Most of the board should be made up of independent directors… We need to gradually remove all state officials from the Board of Directors," Shukeyev said.

Shukeyev called this measure one of the key ones in the campaign to transform the Fund. Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev instructions to complete the draft program of transformation of Samruk-Kazyna by September 2014. The transformation plan will have eight main directions, Umirzak Shukeyev said.

We have identified 8 key directions in the Samruk-Kazyna transformation project. They envisage taking a new approach towards investment activities of Samruk-Kazyna, that involves transforming the fund from a passive shareholder into an active investor. We should not just sit and wait and just issue approvals to projects that are submitted to us by our subsidiaries, but we should work to identify new highly-effective, highly-feasible high-tech projects ourselves," he said.

"We need to improve all the key parameters of our activities and being them in accordance with international standards," Umirzak Shukeyev summarized.

Reporting by Assemgul Kasenovam writing by Dinara Urazova, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina

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