Novelties In The Legislation On Construction And Real Estate In Kazakhstan

For your attention, we provide herein a brief review of the major amendments in the field of immovable property and construction enacted by the Law dated May 24, 2018 "On amendments and alterations to certain legislative acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on the improvement of regulation of business activities" (Amendments Law or New Law).

Amendments to the Law "On architectural, town planning and construction activities in the Republic of Kazakhstan" (Construction Law)

The Amendments Law specifies that a negative conclusion of expert examination shall be the evidence that design contractors violated the requirements for the design and estimate documentation (DED), and such negative conclusion is also the basis for liability under law. At the same time, experts are restricted from issuing soft-law comments (i.e. comments that provide recommendations); in addition, the uncovered violations need to be substantiated with references to certain legislative acts, regulations and guidelines.

We would also like to mention that the Construction Law already provides for the binding nature of the responsibility of both the design contractor, acting as the developer of the DED, and the expert, who issued a positive opinion on it while identifying violations in the DED at the stage of construction.

State architectural and construction supervision authorities (GASK) may now visit facilities under construction at any time for the purpose of preventive supervision and surveillance of a precautionary nature. To this end, the New Law establishes a certain priority for visiting facilities under construction. However, notwithstanding the priority that was established by the New Law, facilities under construction should be visited first in the case of an emergency on site.

Under the Amendments Law, it is now the State Corporation "Government for Citizens" (State Corporation) appointed for the collection of all documentation which, according to the Construction Law, evidences the acceptance of a facility into operation from construction customers. Previously these documents were sent to GASK at the location of the construction facility.

The New Law presents amendments which simplify the process to obtain architectural and planning assignment (APA) along with technical conditions (TC) for connection to utilities. Thus, it shall be enough to have a decision of local executive authorities which grants the land title to the customer's or customers' already existing...