Possible Consequences Of The Adoption Of The Draft Law Of The Republic Of Kazakhstan 'On Permits And Notifications' For Doing Business In Kazakhstan

In keeping with GRATA's practice of informing clients regarding important legal developments that might influence their business, we draw your attention to the following potential changes in the Kazakhstani permit system during the period of December2013 - February 2014.

In line with the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan's order to adopt new principles for Kazakhstani legislation on Permits and as part of the initiative for further reforming the permit system for 2012-2015, the Ministry of Regional Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan together with the Group of Experts representing the business community, drew up the Draft Law on Permits and Notifications ("Draft Law")

The last meeting of the Interdepartmental Commission on Improving the Permit system ("Commission") led by the Deputy Prime Minister of Bakytzhan Sagintayev was held on 26 November, 2013 at the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan, where the results of a large-scale inventory of the licensing system were discussed (http://ru.government.kz/).

Overall, the Commission has considered 925 permit documents, of which (http://kt.kz/):

51 - were cancelled; 6 - were transferred to the notification procedure; 116 - were excluded as permits which do not satisfy the features established by the Draft law "On Permits and Notifications" According to the First Deputy Prime Minister of Regional Development Bakytzhan Sagintayev, «in the annex to the draft law 758 documents are approved, including 719 permits and 39 notifications. Once the Draft Law is adopted, any new permit will be included only by adopting relevant amendments to the law».

Currently the Draft Law is still in the process of being examined in the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

As a result of the Commission's work, the following key points of the Draft Law should be noted:

1) The Draft Law is divided into three main parts:

Provisions of the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan "On Licensing" dated 11 January, 2007 № 214-III with additional improvements hereto; Provisions on notifications provided by the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan "On administrative procedures" dated 27 November 2000 № 107; Provisions on Permit Procedures that are not licensed. 2) The annexes to the Draft Law provide a complete list of licenses, permits and notifications. Under this principle, state authorities and other bodies may not insist that a permit be obtained if such permit is not included in the list approved by the Draft law.

3) All permits are divided into categories, depending on the level of danger of the object for which they are required:

The first category - licenses are imposed on types (subtypes) of activities or actions (operations) associated with high levels of risk; The second category - all permits which are not licenses, are imposed on...