President of Kazakhstan accepts resignation of Business Ombudsman
According to Article 312 of the Entrepreneurial Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Bolat Palymbetov wrote an application for dismissal from his position at his own will due to the completion of his term as the Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs of Kazakhstan. President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev accepted his resignation.
What was done to protect the rights of entrepreneurs for four years?
In 2016, the Business Ombudsman had some specific tasks to protect the rights and interests of entrepreneurs. These are, first of all, elimination of barriers to business development, existing gaps in the criminal and criminal-administrative codes, all kinds of permitting, licensing and corruption barriers that undermine healthy competition and the development of domestic business.
Over four years of work, Business Ombudsman held meetings with entrepreneurs of all regions of Kazakhstan and studied the problems they most often face.
"Often the appeals were related to the topic of illegal initiation of criminal cases and, in general, were aimed at repressive nature of the Criminal Code. That is why the main priority of our activities was the humanization and decriminalization of criminal legislation on economic crimes. The amnesty to mark Kazakhstan's 25th Anniversary of Independence allowed more than 600 convicted entrepreneurs to return to economic activity," Bolat Palymbetov said.
We introduced amendments to the Criminal Code. Joint proposals by the Prosecutor General's Office and Atameken to reduce sanctions for economic crimes have been taken into account as well. In particular, Article 215, "Pseudo-Entrepreneurship" was removed; six articles included notes on the exemption from liability if the act was committed for the first time and does not pose a threat to the state and society, and the entrepreneur voluntarily compensated for the damage. Thus, the business gets an opportunity to remain in economic turnover, to make a further contribution to the development of the economy without interruption of activity.
"We promoted significant changes to the procedures for registering reports of criminal offenses. As a result, the registration of criminal cases in the economy was reduced by 8 times - from 8,170 cases in 2015 to 1,053 in 2019. We made an analysis of the control and supervisory functions of government agencies and an analysis of legislation on the barriers to entrepreneurship to solve these problems," Business Ombudsman said.
Kazakhstan has been cooperating economically with dozens of countries around the world because the domestic businessmen in other countries mustn't be left face to face with their problems. To this end, we signed agreements on mutual assistance and cooperation with business ombudsmen of Russia, Uzbekistan, and Georgia. Thanks to cooperation with the business ombudsmen of these countries, we established information exchange on the issues of business protection, provided assistance in bringing to justice those who have committed unlawful acts against entrepreneurs and in returning their property (goods, money, etc.), and we took measures to settle the disputes before trials.
In general, the international rating organizations positively evaluated Kazakhstan's measures to improve the conditions for doing business. While, according to the World Bank's Doing Business 2017 Report, Kazakhstan ranked 35th, according to Doing Business 2020 (published on 24 October 2019), Kazakhstan has advanced to 25th position in the rating.
The systematic and large-scale work to improve the business environment in Kazakhstan continues due to the support of the Head of State. The Business Ombudsman Institute allows supplementing and strengthening the work in this direction.
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