A regular meeting of the Supreme Council for Reforms was held under the chairmanship of the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kazpravda.kz reports with reference to the press service of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The main topic of the event was the preparation of national projects.
The Chairman of the Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms Kairat Kelimbetov presented to the Head of State ten national projects aimed at implementing the National Priorities and the National Development Plan until 2025.
After hearing the report of the Chairman of the Agency and the opinion of the members of the Council, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev made a number of recommendations. He called on the Government to tackle concrete and realistic tasks that are understandable to citizens and aimed at improving their lives.
The head of state noted that large financial resources will be allocated for implementation of national projects.
"In this regard, I am concerned about the problem of corruption. As soon as there are large numbers in the press related to the implementation of large projects, especially in the field of infrastructure construction, these numbers immediately become the subject of close attention from professional hunters for such projects who want to get the appropriate funds into their pockets. Let's be frank. We know this. Therefore, I would like to very seriously warn the Government and the relevant agency: think carefully about this problem. The benefits from implementation of national projects should be aimed at ensuring the welfare of our citizens," said Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
The President ordered to ensure control over the spending of funds that are planned to be allocated for implementation of national projects. Summarising the above, the Head of State approved the proposed list of national projects and instructed the Government and the Agency to submit specific, agreed, financed texts of national projects by August 15.
The second document brought up for discussion was the Roadmap for implementation of the recommendations presented in the report (Gap analysis) by Sir Suma Chakrabarti. As the President said, this report touches upon important problems and put forward useful initiatives. On the third issue on the agenda - the draft Concept for Development of Local Self-Government - Minister of National Economy Asset Irgaliyev made a presentation.
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called the formation of an effective institution of local self-government an important task.
"In the near future, elections of administrators of towns of regional significance, villages, townships, rural districts will be held. This is not only a sign of sufficient maturity of our political system, but also a serious step in the democratic development of our society. In the context of this transformational transition, one of the main tasks of the state apparatus is to clearly delineate powers and responsibilities between the levels of government: region, district and county. All collisions and gaps that impede the effective implementation of local self-government should be eliminated," the President noted.
It is strategically important to provide the administrators with sufficient resources. In this regard, the Government will have to reconsider approaches to inter-budgetary allocation of funds.
The head of state talked on the tasks that will be entrusted to the new local self-government body - kenes.
"Kenes is a fundamentally new institution; it must have real levers of influence on decision-making and control. An important novelty will be the granting of local self-government the right to adjust the rates on certain local taxes within the established framework. In this part, it is the kenes that will make decisions based on the real socio-economic state of affairs in the countryside. That is, the kenes itself will determine whether maximum fiscal revenues are needed or lower taxes are needed to attract business. Taking into account the work done on the preparation and wide discussion of this document, I believe it is possible to generally support it,” said Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
Following the discussion, the Government was instructed to submit the Concept for Development of Local Self-Government until 2030 for approval.
Reported by the Kazakhstanskaya Pravda.
