Almost a month has passed since the Kazakh Government announced its grand plans for improving the level of life in rural areas; however, the people living there do not seem too excited about it. And this is very critical since the authorities will never be able to realise the plans announced on 20 April, 2021, in Nur-Sultan without an active involvement of the rural population.

Those who wish to know more about these plans may turn to the primary sources. For instance, the governmental press-releases titled «The Government Examines the Issues of Improving the Level of Life in Rural Areas» and, particularly, «105 Bln Tenge to Be Spent on Developing 480 Rural Areas — MNE» (texts available in Russian).

Let us be frank, upon the first reading of these documents, we were struck with awe and excitement. However, when we started making calculations, we were forced to come back to the imperfect earth.

Here is the first quote (text in bold hereinafter by KZ.expert) –

«As part of the implementation of the Nur Otan party’s election program, a full-scale modernisation of 3.5 thousand rural areas with high potential for development (where 87% of the rural population or about 7 mln people reside) will be conducted». 

Now then, according to the data of the Bureau of National Statistics, as of July 1, 2019, the country had 6443 villages and auls. For the past two years, their number is unlikely to have changed significantly. Therefore, it means that the Kazakh Government considers about half of the rural areas as not having high potential for development. So, it is very likely that they are going to be ignored by the state.

Here is the next quote -

«First of all, to improve the quality of life of the rural residents, the modernisation of the  infrastructure is being conducted. Up to and including the year 2025, 27 thousand kilometres of local highways will have been constructed and repaired. 24 mln square meters of housing accommodations are to be supplied in rural areas».

Now let us divide 27 thousand kilometres by 3.5 thousand villages and, on average, we get about 8 kilometres per village. Is it a lot? In our opinion, it is quite enough if we are talking about the roads running across residential areas; however, it is nothing if we are talking about the highways connecting Kazakh villages with one another, with regional centres and neighbouring cities.

Now then, let us divide 24 mln square meters of housing accommodations by 3.5 thousand villages. We get about 7 thousand square meters per one residential area. In other words, quite a lot. However, in per capita terms, we only get 3.4 square meters to add to the average 17.8 square meters. So, let us wish success to the Kazakh Government and, at the same time, express our doubts that it is going to achieve more than one half of the conceived idea.

Here is another quote from the press-release -

«In the agricultural sphere, 845 projects creating 500 thousand jobs, 7 ecosystems involving 350 thousand farm and private households will be implemented. The steps taken will allow to increase the income of 1 mln rural residents». 

Judging by the figures, within the period of four and a half years, the Kazakh Government intends to create about a thousand new businesses employing about 600 people.

In our opinion, this will be impossible to achieve since the volume of the public and private investments required for the implementation of this project is comparable to the volume of the funds invested in the sector during the entire 30 years of Kazakhstan’s sovereignty and independence.  

Here are some more promising quotes -

«100% of rural residents will be provided with high-quality drinking water, 60% — with natural gas.

«In the sphere of healthcare, 1095 facilities will have been repaired and constructed within the period of five years. This will allow to increase the health services coverage by two times. 

Within the period of five years, 315 schools will have been built and 5 thousand schools will have been modernised in rural areas. We are taking steps to achieve the maximal additional training coverage of schoolchildren in rural areas as well as to reduce the gap in the quality of education between the urban and rural areas.

By 2025, 748 cultural facilities and 1719 sports facilities will have been repaired and constructed».  

Perhaps we would have believed these promises had it not been for the following (quoting) -

«In the current year, 105 bln tenge have been allocated for modernising 480 villages».

Let us divide this sum by the number of the villages that are to be blessed in 2021 and we get the modest 0.2 bln tenge per each residential area.

Of course, 200 mln tenge is solid money too. However, considering that the population of each village with high potential for development constitutes 2000 people on average, the governmental investments per capita are going to constitute only 100 thousand tenge. In other words, next to nothing.

The reader may repeat our experiment and analyse the more voluminous press-release titled «105 Bln Tenge to Be Spent on Developing 480 Rural Areas — MNE».

By the way, your calculations may be more precise and convincing than ours due to that simple reason that the mentioned press-release had likely been based on the report of Kazakhstan’s Minister of National Economy Aset Irgaliyev. Therefore, it is much bigger in its size and contains many more details and figures.

For instance, it says that — 

«In the current year, as part of the Auyl-El Besigi project, 105 bln tenge are to be spent on developing 480 villages where 1.3 mln people reside. This will allow to implement more than one thousand projects related to the development of the transportation and social infrastructure as well as the housing and communal services».

In other words, the volume of investments in each infrastructure development project will constitute about 100 mln tenge which means 80 thousand tenge per capita. 

This is even less than we have calculated.

Let us stop here and conclude that the current Kazakh government, individual state agencies and high-rank officials are suffering from the disease called «facile optimism». And it looks like that this condition has already become the norm. 

We believe this is a result of the overlap of the previous practices of setting unrealisable (or über-costly) goals inherited from Nursultan Nazarbayev and the acute necessity to look good in the eyes of Akorda and the Library.