ALMATY – The development of Alatau City will be driven primarily by private investment under a new governance model designed to ensure long-term predictability for businesses, said Bolat Zhamishev, a member of the Alatau City Development Council, at a Feb. 4 meeting.
The meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov, focused on the implementation of investment projects and the pace of infrastructure development. Photo credit: Prime Minister’s press service. Click to see the map in full size. The map is designed by The Astana Times.
According to Zhamishev, the model aims to create exceptional conditions for investors by centralizing key administrative and economic decision-making. At the same time, the state will focus primarily on providing critical infrastructure, according to the Prime Minister’s press service.
“We are talking about a so-called Charter City model, where all major issues of the city are determined from a single center. The task is to create a legal and organizational environment that encourages investment and makes the city open to new types of production that are new for our country,” Zhamishev said.
To protect investors, he noted, the operating conditions for each major enterprise will be managed through individual licenses, ensuring stability of the legal regime. The city’s development will revolve around four main clusters: industrial, logistics, scientific-medical, and tourism.
Smart city vision
International experts also highlighted Alatau’s potential to become a model smart city built from the ground up with advanced technologies embedded at the design stage.
Harry William Dobbs, a member of the Alatau City council and head of Harry Dobbs Design, outlined the city’s prospects as a technology-driven metropolis. He emphasized that Alatau is being designed with innovative technologies integrated from the earliest planning stages, supported by a dedicated legal framework.
“In Alatau, we have a unique opportunity to design a city from scratch, integrating these new smart technologies from the very beginning. This does not happen often, and it allows Alatau to become a leader in this area as it develops, acting as a pioneer among cities that integrate such solutions from the start,” Dobbs said.
He stressed that constitutional, legal and financial foundations are currently being developed to ensure long-term predictability for businesses. Transparent rules, he noted, are crucial for attracting major international companies and private investors to projects such as Smart City initiatives.
Investment and infrastructure plans
According to Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov, the investment portfolio of Alatau City includes 44 projects worth about 1.8 trillion tenge (approximately US$3.53 billion) across industry, logistics, agro-processing, services and the creative sector.
Overall, the projects are expected to create more than 30,000 jobs and help build a sustainable economic environment.
Alongside the creation of an institutional framework, practical work is underway to launch system-forming projects designed to make the city attractive to investors and establish new drivers of economic growth.
Among the priority projects are the construction of the multifunctional Iconic Complex, envisioned as the city’s architectural and business core, and KAIST Kazakhstan. This technological university will train highly qualified specialists and support advanced research.
