Kazakhstan plans to receive $400 mln from the privatization in year 2000

/Almaty office of REUTERS, 05.08.99/ - In his interview with Reuters the prime-minister, minister of finance Uraz Djandosov told Kazakhstan was not intended to lower its income from the privatization of state ownership in year 2000, which was expected to be around $400 mln. "In the next year we also plan to receive about 400 million", he said. According to Djandosov, the sum to be received by the budget due to the privatization in 1999 could be 58 billion tenge (about $440 million). "The main sources of income, speaking of the budgetary means, are the sale of the remaining block of state owned shares of ten big enterprises which is being worked on by the government", said Djandosov. The list includes so-called potential "blue chips", the sale of the remaining non-controlling state owned blocks of which was postponed by the government several times during the last two years due to the crisis in developing markets. Mainly, these are oil and metallurgical companies such as Mangystaumunaigaz, Aktobemunaigaz, Ust-Kamenogorsk titan- magnesium plant, Kazakhmys. Djandosov said that parts of state owned blocks of shares of Kazakhtelecom and Narodnyi Bank from this list of companies would be sold by individual schemes. We have reached an agreement with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development on the scheme of sale of Kazakhtelecom. It will be carried out by the general scheme. We will also identify that for Narodnyi Bank in a few days", said the minister. He assumed that the privatization scheme for Narodnyi Bank would not presume the replenishment of the budget, but the replenishment of bank's own capital. "We are currently selecting an advisor for the remaining eight companies. I think he will be selected in September", said Djandosov. He also said that the government was intended to cooperate with the missions of international financial organizations when preparing the budget for the year 2000. "There will be two missions here(in Kazakhstan), coinciding with each other (by time); one from the World Bank arrives around August 25, and a few days later from IMF, and once again we would like to advise with them about an economic program for the year 2000", he said. By law the government should submit the budget to the parliament till September 15. Djandosov has a clear picture of the budget 2000. Kazakhstan plans to lower the budget deficit down to 3% of GDP from 3.7% of this year. "We plan to have about 3% budget deficit, about 400 million from the privatization, and as I said, taxes around 17.5 per cent of GDP", said Djandosov. He also said that by conservative estimates an economic growth of one per cent was expected in year 2000 in Kazakhstan. "We plan one per cent growth of GDP in the next year. This is a conservative estimate. We decided to stop on this figure, since the growth is susceptible to prices of raw materials. Therefore, we do not assume the price of $18-$20 per barrel (oil), but lower", he said.