Gold Magazine December 2013 - January 2014, Issue 33 | страница 53

86% of Kazakh

citizens respond

positively
to the country’s
economic and political
progress
A new opinion poll by Ipsos MORI shows widespread satisfaction with the
direction of the country and reveals that a majority of citizens have a positive
attitude towards the state of the economy.

T

he results of a new opinion
poll conducted in Kazakhstan,
commissioned by the country’s
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
carried out by UK-based opinion research firm Ipsos MORI, were released
in November by the Kazakh Foreign Minister, Erlan Idrissov, on the eve of his working
visit to London during which he held meetings with British Foreign Secretary William
Hague and the Chairman of Foreign Affairs
Committee, Richard Ottaway MP, and
spoke at the Royal Institute of International
Affairs at Chatham House.
The Kazakh Foreign Minister’s intensive
agenda focused on a wide range of bilateral
issues between Kazakhstan and the UK,
including the final stage of negotiations of
the agreement for the repatriation by land of
millions of tons of non-lethal British military
equipment from Afghanistan. Both the UK
and Kazakhstan have heavily invested in
establishing peace and stability in the region
and are committed to working closely together to that end.
The poll results produced by Ipsos MORI
show strong support among ordinary Kazakh citizens for the general direction of
policy inside the energy-rich Central Asian
country.    86% of a nationwide sample of
respondents said they felt “positive” about
Kazakhstan in general, and 35% said they
felt “very positive”.  70% of citizens said they
felt positive about the country’s economy,
while 81% said they felt the country had
become a better place in which to live over
the past ten years.

According to the survey, Kazakh citizens
have become significantly more satisfied
with nearly every aspect of everyday life in
the country in recent years, from the identification and elimination of corruption to the
overall quality of life and general standards
of living.  They were asked to rate and compare life in Kazakhstan ten years ago and
today. The increase in perceived satisfaction
over this ten-year period ranges from double
to nearly six-fold in certain cases, including
sizeable improvements in job opportunities
(18% said they were “good” 10 years ago;
36% said they are “good” today) and transport infrastructure (6% to 36%).
When asked about the main challenges currently facing Kazakhstan, 26% of respondents identified jobs as the most pressing
issue, while 15% cited housing and 11%
economic growth.  5% and 2% of respondents respectively identified human rights and
democratic reforms as among the main challenges facing Kazakhstan.

70% of citizens said
they felt positive
about the country’s economy,
while 81% said they
felt the country
had become a
better place in
which to live over
the past ten years

The three traits most predominantly associated with Kazakhstan by respondents were
its hospitality (50%), its stability (35%) and
its peacefulness (34%). The top seventeen
descriptive terms associated with the country
are all positive ones.  
Furthermore, an overwhelming majority of
citizens agreed that their children’s generation will have more opportunities than their
own, and that they are optimistic about the
future of the country, with figures of 77%
and 80% respectively.
Further survey results from Ipsos MORI
show that 90% of respondents think that
Kazakhstan’s global standing has improved
in recent years, with 50% saying that it has
“greatly improved”. A large majority of citizens (90%) supported participation in international trade (“tend to support” 36% and
“strongly support” 54%). Similarly, there
was a positive response to the increased contribution to combating environmental problems (“tend to support” 32% and “strongly
support” 54%). Such results demonstrate
overwhelming popular support for government policies aimed at raising Kazakhstan’s
international profile.
Speaking in Astana, Foreign Minister Idrissov said, “I am delighted that this
far-reaching research, which was carried
out throughout Kazakhstan on a scientific
basis, has resulted in such a positive endorsement by the people of our country’s