The total length of the fiber-optic communication lines (FOCL) is about 3 thousand kilometers. FOCL lies on the territory of Akmola, Aktobe, Almaty, Atyrau, East Kazakhstan, Zhambyl, Karaganda, Kostanay, Kyzylorda, Pavlodar, Turkestan regions. The implementer of the project – SilkNetCom LLP - plans to connect the broadband access additional 505 locations in 160 villages.
Earlier, the press service of the Development Bank of Kazakhstan (DBK, the affiliate company of the Baiterek Holding), has announced the opening of funding for the project SilkNetCom LLP to promote broadband Internet access in the rural settlements in all regions of the country. The cost of the Project is 16.8 billion tenge. DBK provided a loan in the amount of 13.3 billion tenge for a period of 12 years. Within the framework of the project, with the financing of the DBK, it is planned to lay fiber-optic communication lines with a total length of 6,200 km from the existing trunk networks of TransTeleCom JSC to all regions of the country by 2020. This will provide high-speed access to the Internet to 1,222 government agencies and state-financed institutions, while covering the broadband Internet access of about 1 million rural residents.
"As the President of Kazakhstan Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev noted at the enlarged meeting of the Government in July this year, significant potential remains in the field of public-private partnership, entrepreneurs began to consider partnership with the state as a base and source of implementation of their business projects. For the Development Bank of Kazakhstan, lending in the format of public-private partnership is a new financial instrument. Taking into account the multiplicative social effect, the first project on PPP terms was a project to ensure access of villages to high - quality Internet", - said Asem Shakenova, senior banker of the Directorate for work with clients of the Development Bank of Kazakhstan.Our efforts to provide high-speed broadband Internet network to rural settlements are aimed not only at improving the speed and quality of local educational, medical, social institutions, but also to reduce the digital inequality between a city and a village in general. In other words, not only employees of the organizations mentioned above will have access to high-quality Internet, but other residents will also have access to it. The villagers will have the opportunity of being at home in a comfortable environment to use the services of e-government, e-health, etc., which will significantly reduce their time and cost in comparison with obtaining services offline",
It should be noted that in the summer of this year, the DBK made changes to its credit policy and expanded the Bank's financial basket, adding a new lending tool - public-private partnership. The Bank has established the minimum "threshold" for PPP projects at the level of 3 (three) billion tenge.
The remaining terms of the Bank's lending have not undergone drastic changes. The "threshold" of financing investment projects is 7 billion tenge, 3 billion tenge - for the food industry, 1 billion tenge - for export operations.
You can read the text of the Memorandum on credit policy of DBK, priority areas of funding, information about the services of DBK and model documents on the Bank’s corporate website http://www.kdb.kz.
