KAZAKHSTAN

GENERAL DATA

Area: 2,724 mln. sq. km (1,052 sq. miles)
Population: 15,340,533 (July 2008 est.)
Ethnic groups: Kazakh 59%; Russian 26%; Ukrainian 2,9%; Uzbek 2,8%; German 1,5%; Uigur 1,5%; Tatar 1,5%.
Capital: Astana (Almaty was a capital before 1998)
President: Nursultan Nazarbaev
Religion: Three main religions include Muslim 47%; Russian Orthodox 44%; Protestant 2%, other 7%
Life Expectancy: total population: 67.55 years; male: 62.24 years; female: 73.16 years (2008 est.);
GDP per capita (PPP): $11 416 (2008 est.);

GOVERNMENT

Government type: Republic; authoritarian presidential rule, with little power outside the executive branch.

Independence: 16 December 1991 (from Soviet Union).

Executive branch: Chief of state: President Nursultan A. NAZARBAYEV (chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 22 February 1990, elected president 1 December 1991).

Head of government: Prime Minister Karim MASIMOV (since 10 January 2007)

Cabinet: Council of Ministers appointed by the president
Elections: president elected by popular vote for a five-year term; election last held 4 December 2005 (next to be held in 2012); prime minister and first deputy prime minister appointed by the president, with Mazhilis approval; Note - constitutional amendments of May 2007 shortened the presidential term from seven years to five years and established a two-consecutive-term limit.

Legislative branch: Bicameral Parliament consists of the Senate (47 seats; 15 members are appointed by the president; other members are elected by local assemblies; members serve six-year terms, but elections are staggered, with half of the members up for re-election every three years) and the Mazhilis (107 seats; 9 out of the 107 Mazhilis members are elected by the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan, a presidentially appointed advisory body designed to represent the country's ethnic minorities; non-appointed members are popularly elected to serve five-year terms).

Judicial branch: Supreme Court (44 members); Constitutional Council (7 members).

ECONOMY

Kazakhstan, the largest of the former Soviet republics in territory, excluding Russia, possesses enormous fossil fuel reserves and plentiful supplies of other minerals and metals. It also has a large agricultural sector featuring livestock and grain. Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources. Kazakhstan enjoyed double-digit growth in 2000-01 and 8% or more per year in 2002-07 - thanks largely to its booming energy sector, but also to economic reform, good harvests, and increased foreign investment; growth slowed to 5% in 2008, however, as a result of declining oil prices and a softening world economy. Inflation reached 10% in 2007 and 18% in 2008. In the energy sector, the opening of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium in 2001, from western Kazakhstan's Tengiz oilfield to the Black Sea, substantially raised export capacity. In 2006 Kazakhstan completed the Atasu-Alashankou portion of an oil pipeline to China that is planned in future construction to extend from the country's Caspian coast eastward to the Chinese border. The country has embarked upon an industrial policy designed to diversify the economy away from overdependence on the oil sector by developing its manufacturing potential. The policy changed the corporate tax code to favor domestic industry as a means to reduce the influence of foreign investment and foreign personnel. The government has engaged in several disputes with foreign oil companies over the terms of production agreement, most recently, in regards to the Kashagan project in 2007-08. Since 2007, Astana has provided financial support to the banking sector which has been struggling with poor asset quality and large foreign loans.

GEOGRAPHY
Located in Central Asia, northwest of China, a small portion west of the Ural River in eastern-most Europe.
Border countries: China 1,533 km, Kyrgyzstan 1,224 km, Russia 6,846 km, Turkmenistan 379 km, Uzbekistan 2,203 km.
Coastline: 0 km (landlocked); note - Kazakhstan borders the Aral Sea, now split into two bodies of water (1,070 km), and the Caspian Sea (1,894 km).
Climate: continental, cold winters and hot summers, arid and semiarid.
Note:  Russia leases approximately 6,000 sq km of territory enclosing the Baykonur Cosmodrome; in January 2004, Kazakhstan and Russia extended the lease to 2050.