Page 18 - bne_newspaper_April_07_2017

Eurasia
April 7, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 18
Kazakh sovereign wealth fund to invest €362.1mn in state firms
bne IntelliNews
Kazakhstan’s Samruk-Kazyna sovereign wealth fund aims to invest KZT121bn (€362mn) into
its portfolio of companies in 2017 and a total of KZT273bn by 2021, the fund said in a statement on April 3.
The investments are part of the fund’s Development Plan for 2017-2021, which was approved by the board of directors on the same day. The plan’s focus will be directed towards the privatisation of “strategic assets” and “reinvestment of funds back into the country”, among other goals.
Samruk-Kazyna manages the stakes held by the state in Kazakhstan’s state-controlled companies. The government, which has contended with a plunge in revenues from oil, has previously said it planned to sell stakes of at least 25% in 45 large state-owned companies.
“It is planned to privatise 217 assets, which are divided into two lists,” the director of the assets privatisation and restructuring department of Samruk-Kazyna, Dauren Tasmagambetov said a month ago. “The first list includes the 45 largest companies of a national scale. Some of them, such as Kazatomprom and Air Astana, are on
the priority list of candidate companies for an IPO. The decision on a public offering depends on a variety of factors: the macroeconomic environment, capital market conditions, and company-specific conditions. We are at the very first stage in which we focus on selecting investment banks, and assess overall IPO readiness.”
However, the plans by the government to privatize assets has continually run into difficukties, including its fabled “People’s IPOs” program to sell shares in state comapniews to the general population.
Despite usually good legislation and
rules, Kazakhstan often suffers from the implementation of programs and ideas it adopts due to corruption and red tape. Kazakhstan occupies 123rd place out of 177 countries ranked in Berlin-based Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2015.
Furthermore, the government’s aim of privatising strategic assets via IPOs by 2020 is threatening to come into conflict with its desire to maintain significant control over the companies.