Catalog

Background

Times are tough in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan.

The transition from a command to a market economy has ended many subsidies and severely strained government-provided social services. At the same time, the private sector and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) are not yet fully developed.

Unemployment and underemployment have been accompanied by low government pension and social assistance payments following dramatic declines in industrial and agricultural outputs.

Poverty has resulted from structural problems related to poor governance, underdeveloped business skills and self-help attitudes, weak NGOs, and inefficient delivery of social services.

Although the economy has shown strong growth since 1999—mainly due to stable international prices of oil and minerals, Kazakhstan’s principal export commodities—many challenges remain for reducing poverty on a sustainable basis.

The Government decided that it could face these challenges better by learning from the key players involved in the daily struggles. In partnership with the ADB, a technical assistance grant from the Japan Special Fund is being used for a study on the growing poverty incidence in Kazakhstan since the breakup of the former Soviet Union.

But this was a study with a difference: a participatory process was introduced to help the Government develop a medium-term poverty reduction strategy. Local authorities, representatives of NGOs and the private sector, and community leaders were all partners in the process. The project, which began in March 2001, is designed to identify the causes of poverty in consultation with stakeholders and formulate a 5-year strategy (2003–2007) to address the major issues.

“The consultative process helped us identify and verify the main issues in poverty from the perspective of the central government, local authorities, community leaders, the private sector, and NGOs,”; ADB Programs Officer Putu Kamayana explains. “And it is not always the same perspective.”

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Buy-In Critical

About 15 workshops and conferences were held during the yearlong project so that stakeholders could be consulted at the different stages of the study on poverty and formulation of the poverty reduction strategy. “Everyone benefited from being able to put their views on the table and hear those of other stakeholders,” Mr. Kamayana notes.

The process helped make the poverty assessment thorough. It promoted a higher level of commitment to the poverty reduction strategy. “There will be greater buy-in and agreement by all the parties on the feasibility of the strategy itself as well as on their respective roles in implementing the strategy,” Mr. Kamayana says.

The project also set up a web site on the dimensions of poverty in Kazakhstan, conducted training for the media on poverty issues, and will soon undertake a public awareness campaign to disseminate information and stimulate debate on important poverty-related issues. A number of “success stories” from many parts of the country, discovered by the project team, will also be publicized. These stories illustrate how people have capitalized on limited opportunities to overcome poverty in surprising, creative ways.

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Role of NGOs Recognized

The project lent indirect support to the country’s nascent nongovernment sector by providing a forum for private sector and NGO representatives to speak their minds. “They hadn’t often been consulted systematically in the past when Kazakhstan had a command economy,” notes Mr. Kamayana. “The Government is only recently recognizing the need to consult NGOs.” The project has made some progress in opening this dialogue—and in institutionalizing it.

A major step forward has been the establishment of a national federation of NGOs, launched by an NGO representative who took part in most of the project workshops. In fact, she has also been made a member of the Interministerial Commission for Poverty Reduction by the Government. The Commission is tasked with overseeing the preparation of the strategy and is chaired by a Deputy Prime Minister.

The project followed a consultative process from its very inception, starting with the fact-finding mission that helped draw up the terms of the technical assistance. Consultations were not limited to the Government and people of Kazakhstan; they included other funding agencies and organizations working in the country. The fact-finding mission was conducted jointly by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank with the aim of coordinating support from different sources to maximize the effect. UNDP is now funding a parallel technical assistance project for activities to complement ADB’s assistance. The World Bank is helping Kazakh- stan update a living standards measurement survey it first helped conduct in 1996.

Mr. Kamayana concludes that it is a modest—but very useful—technical assistance project. The strategy drafted during the project will provide a basis for government action to reduce poverty in partnership with NGOs, the private sector, and civil society. It will also help identify areas for potential assistance, update ADB’s country strategy and program for Kazakhstan, and formulate a poverty partnership agreement.

The participatory approach is important in itself, Mr. Kamayana adds. “We made a good start in promoting and formalizing the Government’s consultation with other stakeholders in planning development projects that address poverty.”