During an extended meeting of the faction of the AMANAT party Alikhan Smailov, Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan, spoke about measures to develop the energy sector and modernize the housing and utilities sector as part of the implementation of the messages of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Prime Minister noted that the first stage of construction of the Saryarka gas pipeline was completed, as a result of which more than 170 settlements got access to natural gas.

"In the gas sector, legislative norms have been adopted, allowing to involve in the development of additional up to 4 billion cubic meters of gas per year, including by developing gas deposits. Construction of a gas processing plant with a capacity of 1 billion cubic meters is underway at the Kashagan field. The project will be completed in 2025," Alikhan Smailov said.

According to him, unproductive intermediaries in the sale of oil products have been excluded at the legislative level. Now oil producing organizations can independently supply oil to refineries for processing.

At the same time, modernization of power plants with the capacity of over 700 MW will be completed this year. This includes a large-scale project to restore the first power unit at Ekibastuz GRES-1 with a capacity of 500 MW.

Along with this, the project on expansion of GRES-2 and construction of GRES-3 was launched. Also, 7 RES projects with a total capacity of 126 MW are being implemented this year.

Head of the Government also noted that the republic has started implementation of the program "Tariff in exchange for investment", which will reduce the level of wear and tear of public infrastructure by 20% until 2029.

"The new tariff policy is based on the principles of transparency, accountability and publicity of the whole process of tariff formation," he said.

According to him, thanks to the program it is planned to attract more than 3 trillion tenge of investment in the renewal of 62 thousand km of engineering infrastructure, as well as to take 25 thousand km of ownerless networks on the balance.

It has also made it possible to start raising the salaries of more than 200,000 workers in the housing and utilities sector from the current 135,000 tenge to 200,000-300,000 tenge.

#Alikhan Smailov #The Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan #Energy #Housing and Utilities