Planning of National Transport Infrastructure
In the Islamic Countries
51
between government and private sector, development and consolidation of their capacity to
implement PPP projects and increasing private investment in the national economy.
One of the programs described in the Program is to increase the interest of the private sector by
finalizing the layout of the prospective service facilities along the national and international
roads and investigating the possibility of simplifying procedures for issuing permits. Within the
framework of the road development, the government also considers the possibility of
introducing toll-road payment for 7,000 km of national roads until 2020.
3.1.3. Technical Factors
Nurly Zhol is primarily a list of approved infrastructure projects. Therefore, it is not a visionary
document that sets a framework for the sector to develop.
As the largest landlocked country in the world, developing transport infrastructure is crucially
important for Kazakhstan. All NTI related plans and program in Kazakhstan stress the
importance of the development and further diversification of transport corridors due to the
need to build the transit traffic, where the containerisation transport plays an important role.
However, each subsector in the planning documents seems to be considered on its own merits
with little consideration given to the integration among transport modes.
Here below is the focus for each transport sector as suggested by the Nurly Zhol.
Roads
To date, the length of the highways of the Republic of Kazakhstan is 128,300 km, in which 23,500
km are the republican roads. The republican road network includes six international corridors
with a total length of approximately 8,250 km. These serve mainly as international transit routes
between China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Russia, and onwards to Europe. They
form part of international agreements under Asian Highways, Transport Corridor Europe-
Caucasus-Asia (TRACECA), and Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC), amongst
others.
Figure 10 shows the main republican roads in Kazakhstan, which includes the international
corridors and the Nurly Zhol focus roads. According to the ADB (2016), 92% of the republican
roads are paved.