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Kazakhstan pours $4 billion for anti-crisis plan

06 March 2009 10:41 (UTC +04:00)

Bakuâ€“ APA-Economics. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev Friday ordered his government to counter the economic crisis with a new 600 billion tenge (four billion dollar) programme of spending on public works, AFP reported.
The programme -- directed primarily at modernizing the country’s aging infrastructure -- is in addition to a previously announced economic stimulus package to prop up the sagging banking and construction sectors.
"We need new means. To accomplish these goals I consider it correct to redirect funds from the raw materials sector, which traditionally have gone into the national fund," he said during an annual address to parliament.
"In 2009-2010 we will redirect funds in order to realize this new plan which I have declared."
The national fund was created with revenues from surplus oil revenues harvested during the high crude oil prices of last year.
The new programme will work to repair municipal energy grids, highways, schools and hospitals and "objects of importance in each community", he said.
The funds for the programme are separate from a 10 billion dollar (7.86 billion euro) economic stimulus package announced in November as the global credit crunch threatened the Central Asian state’s once-booming economy.
Kazakhstan has enjoyed growth rates of up to 10 percent over the last years but it has been hit, like its ex-Soviet neighbours, by the credit crunch as well as the dramatic fall in oil prices.