Economic diversification issues in oil-exporting countries : case of the Republic of Kazakhstan = Gazdasági diverzifikációs kérdések olaj-exportáló országokban : a Kazah Köztársaság

Abstract

This paper addresses diversification efforts of several major oil exporting countries including the Republic of Kazakhstan and attempts to analyse what are the reasons preventing economic diversification in oil-exporting countries in general and in Kazakhstan in particular. Nowadays, it is widely accepted that commodity-based economic models and policies make countries vulnerable to commodity price fluctuations and result in weaker growth in the longer term. However, practical implementation of economic diversification measures in different countries brought to light a lot of problems, which need to be addressed and solved properly. In fact most of government economic diversification problems in most of oil exporting counties failed. The author of this document does not share wide-spread optimism about economic diversification measures in the existing economic model of Kazakhstan. He is of the view that before undertaking any further step towards economic diversification, it is important to understand the reasons, which resulted in the failures of all previous economic diversification programs. Otherwise, new economic diversification measures can become just another dissipation of limited financial resources. This paper is an attempt to address this important topic. The paper finishes with a set of measures, which can be recommended to the Kazakh government to make the Kazakh economy more sustainable to future impacts of resource price fluctuations.