Official Statements:

Astana. President Nursultan Nazarbayev held a telephone conversation with US Vice President Joseph Biden at the initiative of American side.

At the beginning of conversation, Vice President Biden on behalf of the US President expressed its gratitude for Kazakhstan's role in renewal of Asia. He assured that the US new Administration will further promote Kazakhstan’s success, in particular under Kazakhstan’s chairing in the OSCE.

US Vice President stressed Kazakhstan‘s contribution to nuclear non-proliferation and underlined that the United States will support Kazakhstan’s policy in this sphere.

In his turn, President Nazarbayev expressed support for nuclear initiatives stated by US President Barack Obama in Prague. The similar ideas have been stated by the head of state at the UN General Assembly session in 2007.

In the President’s view, the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear weapons in its current format does not meet modern challenges and needs to be improved and updated.

Vice President Joseph Biden stressed the US new President’s readiness to strengthen international non-proliferation regime. He also expressed hope that Kazakhstan will continue to participate in this process and invited President Nursultan Nazarbayev to take part in the international conference on non-proliferation to be convened under the initiative of the US President.

President Nazarbayev and Vice President Biden also discussed state and prospects for the development of Kazakhstan-US relations. The sides agreed that it is necessary to search the new ways of expanding bilateral co-operation, primarily in the economic sphere. In particular, the head of state emphasized the possibility of resuming the work of bilateral co-operation commission.

A wide range of acute international and regional issues, including prospects of global financial crisis was also discussed during conversation.

In the Vice President’s view, recovery of the US economy will start in the 4th quarter of the current year and recovery of its growth is expected in 2010. The sides agreed to contact regularly and continue cooperation in the field of non-proliferation and reduction of nuclear weapons.

Astana, April 21, 2009: The National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan announced (April 14th) that the global financial crisis has not exerted any significant influence on the inflow of direct foreign investments into the country.

Despite the fall of global energy prices in the last quarter of 2008, overall 2008 net export of commodities grew 2.2 times in comparison with the high figure of 2007 and reached a new record high level of USD 33.5 billion.

Having fully compensated the net outflow of resources from other current account items, record high incomes from export of commodities ensured high surplus of current account: almost USD 7 billion or 5.3% against GDP (while in 2007 its deficit made USD 8.2 billion).

A record high net inflow of funding through direct investment operations was recorded in 2008: it amounted to USD 14.5 billion (11% of GDP).

Background: According to the State Statistics Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan 15.1 million tons of crude oil and 3.0 million tons of condensate were produced in Q1, 2009 - a 4.7% increase and a 9% decrease respectively in comparison with Q1 2008.

8.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas was produced in Q1, 2009 (a 1.9% increase). Petroleum gas production made up 4.7 million cubic meters in Q1, 2009 - an 18.6% increase.  In January-February 2009, Kazakhstan exported 10.7 million tons of oil and condensate (an 8.1% increase in comparison with the same period last year). In January-February 2009, export of natural gas reached 3.9 billion cubic meters - an 11% increase in comparison with the same period in 2008.

Importation of oil products made up 315.4 thousand tons - a 19.5% decrease compared to the same period last year. Importation of national gas reached 945.3 million cubic meters (an 18.9% decrease in comparison with the same period last year). 2215 kg of fine gold and 161590 kg of fine silver were produced in Kazakhstan in the first quarter of 2009 - which is a 12% increase and 3,8% increase respectively on production in 2008.

424.9 thousand tons of aluminium oxide (a 2.2% increase) was produced in Q1 2009. 20.9 billion kWh of electric energy was produced in Q1 2009 – 8.2% less than in Q1 2008. Construction works and services exceeded USD 1.4 billion in Q1 2009, which is 4.2% less that in Q1 2008 (the share of housing construction and civil construction works reached USD 612 million, which is a 21.7% increase in comparison with Q1 2008). 60.8% of all the construction works were performed by private enterprises. 5396 buildings were erected; 4622 residential and 774 non-residential.

Telecommunication services totaled USD 684 million in the first quarter of 2009 – a 4.2% increase on Q1 in 2008. Production of agricultural products amounted to USD 895 million in the first quarter of 2009 – 3.6% increase on the same period in 2008.

Capital investments reached USD 4.3 billion in the first quarter of 2009, which is 4.9% less than the first quarter of 2008. Kazakhstan’s gold and currency reserves - including gross reserves of the National Bank and the funds accumulated in the National Fund - decreased by 2.6% in March 2009 (standing at USD 40.9 billion).

Kazakhstan’s foreign trade balance surplus in January-February 2009 reached USD 1.5 billion against USD 5.7 billion in January-February 2008. Meanwhile foreign trade turnover in January-February 2009 dropped 38.8% against January-February 2008 and made up USD 9.1 billion with export responsible for USD 5.3 billion (48.4% decrease y-o-y) and import - USD 3,8 billion (17.4% decrease y-o-y). The share of CIS states in the overall volume of export in Jan-Feb 2009 reached USD 1 billion (36.5% decrease y-o-y), while their share in the overall import was USD 1.6 billion (26.6% decrease y-o-y).

Unemployment in Kazakhstan in the first quarter of 2009 reached 6.9% against 6.6% in the last quarter of 2008.

Tokyo, 21-22 April 2009: the Special Envoy of the Chairman of Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions Secretariat, MP of the Senate of Kazakhstan Parliament, Akhan Bizhanov held bilateral meetings with H.E. Mr. Satsuki Eda, President of the House of Councillors of the National Diet of Japan, as well as representatives of of Shinto Shrines Association (Jinja-Honcho) and Japan Buddhist Federation.

During the meetings, Bizhanov handed over official invitations to take part in III Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, to be held on 1-2 July 2009 in Astana.

Astana, 27 April 2009: Yanesh Lenarchich, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions & Human Rights (ODIHR), visits Astana on April, 27-30.

Mr Lenarchich will meet with Marat Tazhin, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Chairman of the Kazakh Senate, Kuandyk Turgankulov, Chairman of Kazakhstan’s Central Election Commission, Sagynbek Tursunov, Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights and Askar Shakirov, Commissioner for Human Rights in Kazakhstan.

The goal of all meetings is to discuss Kazakhstan’s on-going cooperation with ODIHR, as well as Kazakhstan’s priorities for the OSCE chairmanship in 2010. Kazakhstan is already seen as a conductor of democratic transformations and an effective model for other Central Asian and CIS countries.

Kazakhstan & OSCE/ODIHR Partnership: Regular contact between Kazakhstan and OSCE/ODIHR began in 1994 when a seminar addressing human rights in the Central Asia region took place in Almaty. During the OSCE’s Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Oslo 1998, a MoU was signed that obliged the ODIHR to assist Kazakhstan in the development of its democratic civil society.  The OSCE/ODIHR observed the parliamentary and presidential elections in Kazakhstan in 1999, 2004, 2005 and in 2007. With the Central Election Commission, Kazakhstan’s  Ministry of Foreign Affairs jointly provides regular participation in OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Missions:  Kazakh observers have participated in elections in Azerbaijan (2005), Belarus (2006), Ukraine (2006); in a referendum on the determination of the state-legal status of the Republic of Montenegro (2006);  in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (2006), Austria (2006), Bosnia and Herzegovina  (2006), Armenia (2007), Georgia (2008), Armenia (2008), Montenegro (2008), and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (2008).  ODIHR has helped improve legislative processes in Kazakhstan – including the elaboration of draft laws on local governance and local government, on amendments and additions to acts concerning religious issues, and issues relating to the media and human rights.

Almaty, April 28, 2009: Kazakhstan hosted a summit of the International Aral Sea Salvation Fund (IASSF) founding states.  Presidents Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Kurmanbek Bakiev of Kyrgyzstan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov of Turkmenistan and Emomali Rakhmon of Tajikistan took part.

In his address, President Nazarbayev said that “we believe it important to clean the water of the Aral Sea, start growing crops in high demand and provide potable water for the region’s population… In recent years the Central Asian states have spent a total of USD 2 billion [on this]… Kazakhstan has been doing much to rescue the Smaller Aral and - despite the global [financial] crisis - Kazakhstan will not be scaling down the works planned to save the Sea… We will launch the second stage of our project to regulate the Syr Darya riverbed. All eight components of the programme - worth a total of USD 191 million - will be implemented.”

Addressing his fellow heads-of-state, President Nazarbayev continued: “Operations of the International Aral Sea Salvation Fund (IASSF) have proven that joint efforts are of paramount importance when solving both region-wide and global problems. We need to further unite our efforts to tackle the acute issues our region is facing. Should we analyze the situation in the Aral Sea basin, we can see that the factors endangering the local environment exceed the scale of efforts taken. Among such factors we cite both global climate changes and hardship related to… lack of water for irrigation, even after attending to the problem of scarce river flow.”

In order to improve the current situation, said the Kazakh President, “We need to strengthen the role of the International Aral Sea Salvation Fund’s Board… Secondly, the new Executive Committee should take all possible measures to activate cooperation with international organizations and donors…  Thirdly, granting observer status in the UN General Assembly to the IASSF last year is of great importance; this enables the Fund to develop cooperation with UN institutions. Fourthly, we need to intensify efforts to inform the international community about the problems of the Aral Sea. We hope that the UN Regional Center on Preventive Diplomacy in Central Asia will contribute to this.”

Miroslav Jenca, the United Nations’ Secretary-General’s Special Representative and Head of the UN Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy in Central Asia (UNRCCA), read an address from the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: “The UN is ready to render support in resolving issues related to water resources and hydropower industry in the Aral Sea basin nations… The Regional Center on Preventive Diplomacy in Central Asia is ready to help you in finding a long-term solution… and act as a middleman in any future talks on the issue. Specialized UN institutions are also ready to share their technical expertise and experience. The IASSF” wrote Ban Ki-moon, “has all the potential to facilitate finding mutually beneficial long-term solutions.”

The International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea (IFAS) is an interstate organization established in 1993 by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to fund regional environmental and research programmes and projects aimed at saving the Aral Sea. Kazakhstan is Chairman of the IFAS for the next three years.