Oil chief succeeds Kazakh premier

Oil chief succeeds Kazakh premier

ALMATY (Reuter): Kazakhstan's parliament appointed the
resource-rich country's oil chief as prime minister yesterday and
he said there would be no change in policy -- despite President
Nursultan Nazarbayev's criticism of the outgoing team.

Nurlan Balgimbayev, head of the state-run Kazakhoil company,
became prime minister soon after Nazarbayev had accepted the
resignation of reformist Akezhan Kazhegeldin's government and
described its record as bleak and inconsistent.

Balgimbayev aides told Reuters that Nazarbayev, who enjoys
sweeping executive powers, would hold a news conference later
yesterday.

Other appointments could be announced then after he told
parliament the government should ideally be "compact and
professional" and consist of just 18 people.

Balgimbayev told Interfax: "The government's policies will not
change and 100 percent continuity will be maintained."

The new head of the ex-Soviet republic's cabinet was appointed
less than an hour after the presidential press service leaked
news that Nazarbayev had accepted the resignation of
Kazhegeldin's government.

Balgimbayev told Interfax the offer was a complete surprise.

Nazarbayev's proposal to a joint session of both houses of
parliament to appoint Balgimbayev prime minister was backed by 39
deputies out of the 40 present.

The move came shortly after the president delivered a keynote
address outlining Kazakhstan's priorities and strategies up to
2030.

"I should pay tribute to the current government which worked
energetically in difficult conditions. But at the same time the
strategy of the president in the economy has not been implemented
in full," Nazarbayev said before his main speech.

"Reforms have been insufficient and in some aspects have not
yielded expected results."

Balgimbayev, 49, is an oil engineer by education and made a
career out of working on large Kazakh oil fields.

He was among those who offered Nazarbayev a plan to make
Kazakhstan the world's sixth oil power, boosting crude output to
170 million tons by 2010 from this year's expected 27 million
tons.

One of Nazarbayev's sons-in-law was Balgimbayev's deputy in
Kazakhoil.

Blood and clan ties are very important in the Central Asian
state of 16.7 million people.

Balgimbayev's predecessor Kazhegeldin, 45 and a successful
businessman before his appointment as prime minister, had been in
charge of the reformist government since October 1994.

Kazhegeldin has been seen by foreigners as a guarantor of
market reforms and their multi-billion dollar investments in the
resource-rich former Soviet republic.

His government has managed to stamp out inflation, stabilize
the national currency, win investors' trust and further
liberalize the unwieldy economy inherited from Soviet times.

But the president said in his address those achievements were
"bleak" against the background of "weak and inconsistent" reforms
in the social, agricultural and industrial sectors.

Recently, Kazhegeldin has been under fire from influential
business and political forces opposed to his reforms.

Kazhegeldin's rapid-fire sell-offs of huge but loss-making oil
companies to foreigners are said to have met staunch resistance
from their Soviet-era directors.

When the oil privatization was in full swing, Kazhegeldin told
Reuters in May this resistance had been broken.

Balgimbayev, who never publicly opposed oil sell-offs to
strategic investors, has said government stakes in Kazakh oil
companies should not be offered to portfolio investors for at
least another year to give them time to appreciate.

Kazhegeldin's government was planning to sell large stakes in
oil, metals and communications to portfolio investors on the
recently started stock exchange by the end of the year.

On Sept. 22 Kazhegeldin left for treatment abroad.

In a telephone interview from a clinic in Switzerland on Sept.
28 he said his position was in doubt but denied rumors he could
seek refuge abroad.