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| Kazakh workers build a skyscraper in the country's capital Astana |
The trigger point for Nursultan Nazarbayev came via a graph, in January. Kazakhstan’s long-standing president had called a meeting of his ministers to discuss the country’s economic performance. It was doing well enough, growing by 6% year-on-year in 2013, against 5% in 2012. Private consumption was up, thanks to rising consumer lending, as was foreign direct investment and private-sector investment. The country was performing well in the World Bank’s annual Doing Business report, ticking up 24 places to 50th place in the five years to 2014.
Nazarbayev had long been desperate to turn central Asia’s largest economy – a natural bridge between Russia and China, and a buffer against rising extremism south of its borders – into a full middle-income nation by 2030.
By mid-century, presumably after passing control of the country to a handpicked successor, he wanted Kazakhstan to be transformed into a top-30 industrial nation by size – it currently ranks 46th according to the IMF, behind Iraq and Pakistan.
Yet the 74-year-old, who has ruled Kazakhstan for the past quarter-century with a canny mixture of carrot and stick, could feel both time and his ambitious timetable slipping from his grasp.
