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Gold/Mining/Energy : Steppe Gold (SPE:V) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: brian krause who wrote (707)	3/5/1998 2:53:00 PM
From: John Menzies	Respond to of 1248

I say this without any doubt whatsoever - Kazakstan will be an economic force to be reconned with in the years to come - it will be the economic driving force in central asia and the probalems which is currenlty experiencing are those which one would normally associate with an emerging ecoomy. Moodys comments are generally good. In the early 90's there was no pension plan or social security net, inflation was out there somewhere beyond calculation, foreign investment was nil and GDP was -20% (minus) Thepresdient has inacted vast change - and there have been some problems and bottlenecks as a result. I have a view that any thinking person would have expected that there would be problems with such rapid change - their exact nature would be more difficult to pinpoint however. The changes in Kazakstan have been immense and very real. In the early part of this decade there was no food - nothing to buy in the store - people went quite hungry. The situation is now differeent all due to robust economic reform. The catalyst for rapid development of the economy from here will be the construction of the Caspian sea pipeline - and there is some resolution on this subject which will become more obvious in the next year. The oil revenues will drive the economy and improve the governemnets tax income. This is a country which is already starting to see the attention of the western powers (remember the recent tour by HC to the region and meetings Pres to pres in Washington). Kazakstan and the other states of the Caspian Basin will become increasinbgly imporatnt as an alternate source of oil and gas fpr the west in the coming decade. To believe that Kazakstan will never adavnce beyond where it is - offering amongst other things security of title and a robust foreign investment law and regulations shows no histroic perspective and no understanding whatsoever of the massive change from a standing start which has occured in this country. Not to say that there have not been problems - of course there have been - but these are acceptable in the process sof reform and many will not be repeted again in the future. regards John Menzies