| Grigory Marchenko | ||||||
It's official: Kazakhstan has a working free-market economy and it is booming. A string of announcements over the past few months has made the central Asian republic's economy the darling of international institutions and superpowers.
The US started the ball rolling in March when it recognized the country as a "market economy". It is a label that Washington has been reluctant to bestow on many of the countries of the former Soviet Union because of complaints by producers at home. Most of the former Soviet states are big exporters of cheap raw materials, produced at below-market costs thanks to what is effectively free power.
In part US recognition was a political payoff for Kazakhstan's support of the US-led anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan but it is also hard to ignore the country's rapid return to robust health.