Samruk-Kazyna JSC (“the Fund”) has held a discussion session today entitled the "Progress of Samruk-Kazyna Fund’s Privatisation Programme and its Role in the National Economy" as part of the Astana Economic Forum (“AEF”). The participants in the session were the Fund's senior management; Kairat Kelimbetov, Governor of the Astana International Financial Centre; Moazzam Mekan, Regional Manager for Central Asia of the International Finance Corporation; and the CEOs of Samruk-Kazyna portfolio companies Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, Air Astana and Kazatomprom, among others.

Kazakhstan plans to sell stakes in about 800 enterprises as part of the country's State Privatisation Programme for 2016-2020. The main goal of the programme is to reduce the state's share in Kazakhstan's economy to 15%, a level comparable to OECD countries. Samruk-Kazyna owns 215 assets on the list of companies to be sold. To date, about half of these have already been privatised; the largest and most significant assets are set to follow over the next few years.

Umirzak Shukeyev, CEO of Samruk-Kazyna JSC, commented:

“Implementing this programme is among the Fund's highest priorities. We are not only selling these assets, but also actively carrying out pre-sale preparation, which includes enhancing the operational and financial performance of our companies, standardising reporting across all assets, and optimising companies' organisational structures. These measures are enabling us to significantly improve the competitiveness and efficiency of the Fund's companies.”

Most of the Fund's assets are planned to be privatised by the end of 2018, except for the largest assets: these will be privatised through IPOs or sales to strategic investors. For these assets, the Fund has set an indicative privatisation deadline for the end of 2020, within which the Fund will be guided by macroeconomic and market conditions. All information about the privatisation programme is available at: http://privatization.sk.kz./.

Berik Beisengaliyev, Managing Director for Asset Optimisation, remarked:

"The Fund began preparations for the privatisation of its largest assets in 2016. We are working on key areas such as strategy updates, business transformation and regulatory changes. Together with our portfolio companies, we are holding meetings with potential investors to obtain their preliminary feedback on our companies' business models and equity stories. We plan to privatise our best-prepared assets as early as 2018, subject to favourable market conditions and the companies' preparedness."

The session is open to all members of the media who are accredited at the AEF. In addition, speakers' quotes can be found under the hashtag #AEF2017privatization on the Fund's official Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SamrukKazyna/.