The Eurasian Development Bank forecasts that Kazakhstan’s inflation will gradually decline, allowing the National Bank to reduce its policy rate from 16% to about 12% by 2027. GDP growth reached 4.1% in the first half of 2026, driven by non-resource sectors including manufacturing, construction, transport and trade. The bank expects 5.5% GDP growth in both 2026 and 2027, while a stable exchange rate near 490 tenge per US dollar is expected to limit imported inflation and support cheaper borrowing, business expansion and job creation.

Marat Usmanov reflects on the upheaval facing societies as digital money, artificial intelligence and automation reshape economies. In an interview, futurist Brett King argues that digital currencies will be needed for AI-driven economic systems, predicts major advances in longevity and healthcare, and expects automation to displace many jobs, prompting governments to consider universal basic income. King views Kazakhstan as well positioned to develop if it invests beyond fossil fuels and builds future-oriented infrastructure, while predicting that China and other technologically adaptive economies will gain ground. Usmanov remains unconvinced by the promise of an inclusive digital future, raising concerns about control, anonymity, inequality and whether technological change will benefit everyone.

Former Kazakh military officers who say they were wrongly convicted of corruption accuse the National Security Committee, military investigators and anti-corruption officials of fabricating cases and using coercion to obtain testimony against senior defense officials. They claim that dozens of officers were convicted without material evidence and that corruption weakened Kazakhstan’s armed forces, a problem exposed by the January 2022 unrest. The speakers call on President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and the public to restore the rule of law, fight corruption and rebuild the army, warning that public protests will grow if the justice system remains compromised.

Marat Usmanov describes moving from viewing AI as a novelty to using GPT daily for creative and practical work. He argues that GPT’s constant agreeableness creates major problems: users retain responsibility for its output, it can fabricate information, it mimics expertise rather than genuinely understanding, and it adapts to users in ways that may encourage dependence. Despite these concerns, he considers GPT valuable for overcoming creative inertia, developing ideas, and exploring hypotheticals, ultimately characterizing it as a flattering but unreliable mirror rather than a true partner.

The public-private partnership contract supporting Kazakhstan’s Sergek surveillance system is due to expire in 2024. East Kazakhstan prosecutors recovered 238 million tenge from Körkem-Telecom after finding unlawful state payments that inflated the project’s cost; the company had received a contract worth more than 7 billion tenge. Sergek has expanded from Astana to at least eight other Kazakh cities, with tens of thousands of cameras monitoring traffic and public spaces. Although the cameras, communications infrastructure and servers belong to the state, the software remains the private property of Körkem-Telecom, leaving government agencies dependent on the company to operate the system. The article argues that transferring software control to the state before the contracts expire is essential for data sovereignty and national security.

The column argues that Kazakhstan’s public employees are routinely pressured to surrender part of their wages, fund official events, attend state-organized celebrations, buy pro-government newspapers and perform unpaid cleanup work. It portrays local akimats and the Nur Otan party as using threats of dismissal, withheld bonuses and bureaucratic quotas to enforce participation, while questioning where collected money goes. The piece also criticizes compulsory membership in Nur Otan and presents these practices as a revival of Soviet-style coercion under capitalism, concluding through satire that the political system resembles a circus rather than voluntary civic participation.