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Shall we not say "crisis," Kazakhs wonder
Mon Nov 24, 2008 8:45pm EST
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By Maria Golovnina
ASHIBULAK, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - From a lone shepherd in the great silence of the empty steppes to the champagne-sipping socialites of the big cities, no-one in Kazakhstan can escape a looming shadow.
Life may already be tough enough for Danaibek Saidenov, who like generations of nomadic ancestors lives in austere, fog-filled pastures protecting his sheep from wolves.
Now, with a global financial crisis, he faces an enemy far more pervasive than anything the steppes have seen.
"Life's much harder now," said Saidenov, as he let the reins fall loosely on his horse's neck. "There is simply no money. When bankers have no money, that means we don't have it either."
With demand for sheep products falling and shearing costs still high, Saidenov says he is struggling. He sighs and kicks his horse into a gallop as his flock streams down the hillside.
In this remote corner of the world near Kazakhstan's border with China, Saidenov's concern shows the spread of damage from the world's worst financial crisis in 80 years.
In Kazakhstan, a resource-rich nation where traditional herder communities exist alongside a complex oil-fueled economy, the consequences may be stark.
Long the darling of emerging market investors, the land-locked ex-Soviet state five times the size of France is suffering badly, after years of unlimited access to cheap credit funded economic expansion.
With oil prices now falling and investors fleeing high-risk markets, the pace of Kazakh economic growth has already halved to five percent this year from an average 10 percent since 2000.
As the gloom seeps fast through society, the crisis is a worry to veteran leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who knows how much stability in a volatile region depends on economic fundamentals.
So worried are senior figures about eroding confidence that a top official suggested this month that Nazarbayev stop using the very word "crisis" altogether -- a telling insight into the minds of those who run Central Asia's biggest economy.
Adding political undertones, activists have held small but regular rallies against what they see as the injustices of Nazarbayev's rule -- a rare trend in a society where the state, as in Soviet times, brooks no dissent.
GLITTER
Just an hour's drive from the barren steppes where Saidenov grazes his sheep lies Kazakhstan's financial capital Almaty -- a city of bleak Soviet architecture glossed over by the flashy extravagance of Kazakhstan's new-found wealth.
The sight of dozens of cranes, towering motionless over Almaty's hazy skyline, is testament to how the crisis has frozen the highly leveraged real estate industry. Continued...
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