Azerbaijan keeps its options open
When Kazakhstan's president Nursultan Nazarbayev uprooted the capital's home from Almaty to Akmola, then in May renamed the new capital Astana (Akmola means ("white tomb", Astana means "the capital"), there were plenty of jokes kicking around in back rooms of the country. "The president wants to be a big reformer. Lenin moved the capital, and George Washington moved his. If you want to think big, move the capital," a former Kazakh government official said.
Foreign portfolio investors who have waited for the past two years for Kazakhstan's economy to come of age are less amused. "Kazakhstan is like a company which has issued a negative earnings announcement. It's become a show-me stock," says Harlan Zimmerman, a portfolio manager at Foreign & Colonial in London. Despite the country's vast natural resources and government promises to kick-start the blue-chip privatization program, progress has been thwarted by reshuffles and bureaucratic red tape, a lack of capital, and delays in reform.
However, while portfolio investors remain frustrated, foreign direct investment is flowing - €1.2 billion in 1997 according to the EBRD - most of it into the oil and gas sectors.