Certain Issues of Applying Kazakhstan Legislation in Concession Projects

We are delighted to let you know that an article, prepared by AEQUITAS Infrastructure & PPP team, (Partners Nurlan Sholanov and Ardak Idayatova) was published today on Zakon.kz website.  The publication is dedicated to the issues of applying Kazakhstan legislation in concession projects.

It is worth mentioning that, over the past few years, Kazakhstan has been trying to boost the development of public-private partnership (PPP) against the backdrop of global economic trends. Specifically, in addition to other initiatives and activities, such as the creation of specialized institutional entities in the field of PPP (the so-called PPP Units), road maps, formation of ready-made project document packages for local-level projects and other measures to promote the PPP, it has also been manifested in the adoption of a special PPP Law and relevant amendments to the then almost non-operational Concession Law of 2006. Despite the said amendments and subsequent changes thereto, the Concession Law still leaves unresolved or insufficiently clear a number of crucial issues.

The domestic concession legislation's readiness and attractiveness is put to a serious test when implementing concession and PPP projects of special importance, Nurlan and Ardak having had an opportunity to directly participate as advisors in the first such project.

Taking into account all the above circumstances and the experience of implementing the first concession project of special importance in Kazakhstan, authors believe that the legislative regulation over concession relations in certain aspects (and similar PPP issues in general) requires improvement.

In particular, it necessary to attend to the following primary issues, which may become serious obstacles for private partners and lenders when implementing, first and foremost, concession projects.

Please click the link to read the whole article.