SOCIUM

The public opinion on investments

Two squares, cross and circle

Almaty

11-20 of May

704 persons were questioned

by Yeldes Seitkemelev, expert of ASaP

ALMATY, May 30

(Specially for THE GLOBE for the Investment Summit)

Let�s go to the ancient Turkic symbols: at first there was the cross, outflow of light from the centre (Altai) to the four directions: North-West-South-East.

Then there was the octagon (the Turkic compass): two squares put together. The first one meant the four parts of the world, the second one � intermediate points (north-west, south-east, north-east, south-wets). Let�s look attentively at the second square.

The Almaty Association of Sociologists and Politologists conducted the poll devoted to the theme of favourableness and attractiveness of the Kazakhstan investment climate. The respondents� answers were the following (see the tables 1-9). We mention from the very beginning, usually the polls of different expert groups (businessmen, potential investors) are published in the press; but our task was different: to reveal the population�s opinion, as the final addressee of investments and the essence of the investments policy of the state.

Long-short investments to a company or business is a movement. The foreign investments are the double-side movement: these investments come themselves, and at the same time we have to go asking for investments. Where should we go?

North-west

�It�s Mab!�

We will exclaim as Mercucio: �It�s all tricks of the queen Mab!�

The hero from �Romeo and Juliet� expressed in his passionate monologue a fear of the poetic men of the Renaissance before the severe prose of the epoch of capitalistic relations. We will name as �Mab�s tricks� the strengthening feeling that this epoch will not come to us. We wish the smog Albion resembled more and more to the shape of the London exchange, but� in vain.

The investors to the short-term projects (securities, stocks of the companies, etc.) are alike smog over the Themes: after the wind blows there will be no money. �It�s Mab!�

There were the others, investors-producers, who invested money to manufacturing, construction of plants, exploitation of mineral deposits� In the beginning of the century the English concessions worked, gaining �copper cream� at Karsakpai, Spassk, Ridder: at the deposits where ore bed reached the surface and it was possible to �take� ore with spade. They took, but the hegemonic class came and everything collapsed. Does the same historical memory stop British investors? Or, maybe, they stop because the world gives up the copper wire and uses optical fibre. Or because the investors-producers have no privileges and have the same conditions as the investors speculating with the stocks of companies? �It�s Mab!�

There are a lot of problems. Aktyubinsk region has the world�s biggest chromate deposit. The well-known Donskoi concentrating mill is the unique one in the former USSR. Chrome oxide is thrown away, vast territories are polluted with two-valent chrome, which cannot be technologically processed. Chrome is covered with clay, as people irresponsibly hope for soil adsorption. It is a dead land, and it will be dead within few millenniums. It is just one example of the economical use of our main wealth � our land. Well, invite investors. Let them at first clean after us, then do their main job.

But we were and we are behind the English Channel. According to the literaly critic Victor Shklovsky, through the Great Silk Road namely the steppe legend about two lovers (�Kozy-Korpesh and Bayan-Sulu�) reached the Venice bazaars, and later was performed by the Shakespear�s �Globe�. Well, for us this way is not too long, if we achieve the aim. But British investments have not dreamt about profits gained from the invested money. Thus, it is too early foe the local Mercucio (or Shege?) to be afraid of English bourgeoisie (�It�s Mab!�), it is better to whisper as Byron�s Child Garold: �� and English shore disappeared in the boiling water.�

South-west

�Orphan�s penny�

the Afghan proverb says: �Barber learns his skill on an orphan�s head.� We all became orphans without our Soviet Motherlan� it is difficult not to agree with G. Yavlinsky: �One who does not regret about Soviet Union has no heart. One who wants to restore the Soviet Union does not have the head.�

� and if this head is under the blaze of a foreign barber?

South-west.

The Iranian direction.

The Islamic way to the terminals in the Persian Gulf: again oil, oil and oil� We have already showed to the world, what navigators we are. Hence, we have to try to go on the ground. And in this way there is Afghanistan.

We should mention at once: if the whole state is going to live in the 14th century (thanks Allah!) it is the state�s internal affairs. And �don�t judge, and you won�t be judged.� But this state was called �Bactria�, and modern Tajikistan (ex-soviet republic), inhabited by the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens and Kazakhs, was one of the provinces of this state. All these people were the true Muslims, who always thought Allah did not send anything bad or useless. And opium poppy (koknar) is also the Creator�s favour to ill and hungry people, as all his charity and mercy. But the other time came, and now any chemical laboratory equipped by a centrifuge is alike a military plant: tons of pure heroine bring �net� profit in the amount of several thousand (!) percent. This profit makes it possible to struggle for pureness of ideas stipulated in the Koran. After the inhuman kill of the Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan, the Iranian-Afghan site is �locked�. But the site in Pyanj� What can we say?

But not everybody think the �Afghan corridor� is a deadlock. For example, this direction is worked out by Turkmenistan. From year to year this route become more and more real. Besides, Afghanistan is interested in transportation and mining of its own oil. Because of the uninterrupted civil war, prospecting of the deposits was stopped. But according to eyewitnesses, there are some places where oil is on the ground forming lakes. The drilled wells alike the Kuwait ones, will become �vulcanising�, and these oil �geysers� will have to be closed with something. For example, with investments. And Western investors are waiting: the Talibs are supposed to establish their control over the entire Afghanistan. And they are not interested at all how much heroin will be transited (being sold in the rout) through the Central Asia.

The way of the Kazakhstan oil is blocked by the same oil. The matter is, that the Caspian hydrocarbons have a high admixture of the natural paraffin. This raw material is used to produce candles (being transported by pipelines, this material accumulates (sticks) on the walls. And the oil artery resembles to one of a human-being suffering from stenocardia: to pump blood through the narrowed hole (walls are covered with cholesterine and the diameter is minimum) the additional effort of the heart muscle is required. The same situation is in the oil pipeline: paraffin on the walls requires a greater number of the pump stations (�hearts�), but their number does not guarantee that in any place a paraffin �lump� will not fall and will not close the oil artery. That means for the system the myocardial infarct in several kilometres. To prevent this, before transportation it is required to take paraffin from oil (French companies have already learned to do this), but oil (�blood of the economy�) is necessary for the state organism at any second, otherwise it will collapse, coma. Besides, to build and exploit the enterprises taking paraffin, the high technologies are required as well. Where may the latter be found, if main money is invested to prospecting and mining�

It seems, that people who looked in this direction, recites poems of Omar Hayam:

�I am told: �In the future life

You will find wine and paradise houries.� Well,

Fill the cup up to edges:

Cash penny is more valuable than a borrowed thousand.�

South-East

�The way to Edo is long��

The Japan soldier is true to his oath given to the emperor, while the emperor is alive. The soldier � he is the soldier even being captured as a prisoner, and that means he has to be true to his oath. When the emperor Hirohito died, he released his worriers from the oath, and they could return to their Motherland. But they are still buried in the Kazakhstan ground, in the nameless graves with GULAG numbers� Roads, bridges, communications were built in their �calm burial grounds�. Even the public bath was constructed there (by the way, this bath regularly burnt). The soldiers lied still, as they were in the line. They are still lying. They are forgotten and nameless.

During Gorbachev�s visit to Japan, the lists of Japan war prisoners died in Soviet Union were handed out to the Japan government. These lists were not full. Till present there are so-called �nobody�s� forgotten burial grounds of Japan soldiers died in Kazakhstan. Probably, in the annals of CNS (the successor of GSS of the USSR) there are lists of Japan soldiers, numbers and coordinates of their graves, etc. There was the public organisation �Kaeri� (Returning�) headed by a daughter of a Japan war prisoner. They tried to prepare the new lists� relatives of the dead soldiers came from Japan, visited the graves. Everything happened, but stopped. But the most important thing..

We did not repent ourselves. We did not bring the soldiers� souls to the town of Edo. Is it possible now to be surprised with extremely polite participation of Japan money in the Kazakhstan investment policy. While doing ceremonial bows, the Japanese people let their �competitors� (people from South Korea and China) outrun. With the same emphasised politeness they talk about tyranny of our functionaries, though all the rest feed such functionaries and then take them in hand for example, �the Lokhid� case).

Though the Japanese people are present invisibly here: in the southern capital they built the road to Medeo, blocks of the two-storey buildings of high-seismic resistance, administrative buildings and erections, etc. that is their �yellow brick road� to home. But for the time being�

Take a heavy stone from you soul,

This stone will be a starting point of the way.

The way to Edo is long�

North-East

�Your turn, sir!�

Kugcvang is a position in the chess play,

when it is required to make a step

leading to a worsening position, to a loss.

In the middle of 1970-s the investigators from the State Security Committee shouted to dissidents: �You deceived the entire country for billion dollars, and do you think, we will be joking with you?� Really, in the result of the law-reinforcement activity of the soviet dissidents, the country was isolated from the world and incurred great losses. Nobody talked about investments due to the �iron curtain�. The Berlin wall. �Peaceful co-existence�.

Coulomb was to find America, as the latter was on his way as the continent. We also moving to any direction are unavoidably in American friendly iron hands.

Before the transitional period the �leader of the sovietology� Zbignev Bzhezinsky, predicted that the break of the USSR would began when the republics having outlet to the sea would leave the country. It happened with the Baltic states. This was played in the end of the 1990-s, now the fight for the centre is finished.

�Let�s remember, how we blew our rockets near Sary-Ozek too fast, and we will agree: this game is completely lost.

��But there is a new turn�: we gave a part of our territory to China. It was not planned by people, who try to return the centre. Then there was an urgent counter measure (the hearings of the Commission on Security and Co-operation in Europe (Helsinki Commission) of the US Congress).

Akezhan Kazhegeldin and his companions. Yevgeny Zhovtis is a friend himself. Action 2, picture 3: the same heroes and He. Now He will say: �good guys will receive investments, bad ones will not be given sweets.� Or He will not say this, but take the next step. But, most probably, he is waiting: we are in the �Kugcvang� situation.

Or does fight only begin? If the centre of Eurasia is lost already, maybe it is better to fight for the centre of Asiope?

It�s your turn�

***

well, we have completed our tour to �all the four parts of the world� according to the second square of the Turkic compass. Now let�s return to the cross. If we look at the cross-point of all the four lines (at the centre of outflow of light) attentively, we may see several concentric circles. �Everything returns to the same position.� Or is the circle closed? Anyhow, we are in �the first circle�. And the search for the main direction is an everyday and hard work which obliges us � to be in the centre of the circle and be the centre of the circle.

TABLE 1

What do you think about the Kazakhstan investment climate?

(% in the column)

TABLE 2

If you think the Kazakhstan investment climate is favourable, how it is expressed?

(% in the column)

TABLE 3

If you think that the Kazakhstan investment climate is unfavourable, what are the main reasons of it?

(% in the column)

 TABLE 4

Investments to what spheres are able to improve more the social-economic situation in the country?

(% in the column)

TABLE 5

What type of investments are the most attractive for Kazakhstan?

(% in the column)

 TABLE 6

What is your attitude to transfer of Kazakhstan enterprises to the foreign investors as their property?

(% in the column)

TABLE 7

What do you think about the foreign investor�s right to establish in Kazakhstan enterprises completely belonging to them?

(% in the column)

TABLE 8

What do you think, what forms of attraction of foreign investments comply more with the Kazakhstani interests?

(% in the column)

 TABLE 9

What do you think, what the attraction of foreign investments to the Kazakhstan economy may result in?

(% in the column)

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