Kazakhstan is one of the leading lights of the ex-Soviet Bloc, with such well-developed banking and pension sectors that they are searching for somewhere to invest their money.Ben Aris reports from Almaty.The trees that cloak the buildings in central Almaty provide only limited protection from the hot midday sun, but Kazakhs window-shopping in the new Ramstore shopping mall at the top of the city’s slope beneath the Tien Shan mountains are keeping cool.
Kazakhstan’s spectacular financial boom is beginning to attract the attention of European banks, reports Christopher Pala from Almaty.European banks have long perceived Kazakhstan, the largest after Russia of the former Soviet republics, as “too far, too small, too risky”. Five times the size of France with its economic capital, Almaty, close to the Chinese border and as far from Paris as Paris is from New York, Kazakhstan’s population is only 15 million: a small market spread over a huge area, ruled by an authoritarian president unwilling to make the transition to democracy.