The Harvard OPM Reunion in Kazakhstan: The Economic Impact
Translated from Russian with the help of AI. Original: Russian version
My wife invited her entire Harvard Business School OPM class to Kazakhstan for a four-day reunion. I look at its economic effect: spending, new ambassadors for the country, interest in investing, and the talks that dispelled myths about Kazakhstan.
My wife graduated from the OPM 64 program at Harvard Business School, and this year she invited her entire class to Kazakhstan for a reunion. The OPM program is attended mainly by business owners from around the world, most of them running large companies. In other words, these are high-net-worth people who can bring investment to the country.
The reunion lasted four days, from 10 to 13 September. During that time we held an investment forum for them with the participation of our government agencies, businesses and Atameken, took them to Shymbulak and Charyn, introduced them to our customs and traditions through a theatrical show, put on a show of national sports games, and showed them many other sights of Almaty. We even took them to a banya. A little over 90 people came, and each was very impressed by the country, its development and its opportunities.
I look at everything through the lens of economics. Even leaving aside that each guest left at least USD 5-6 thousand in our country, more than half said they were now unofficial ambassadors for Kazakhstan, almost all will recommend the country, and five or six expressed a wish to invest. Members of the group also contributed to iQanat, a project supporting rural children, and many were surprised by its scale.
The talks by the head of the AIFC and the chairman of the board of the Atameken National Chamber of Entrepreneurs made no less of an impression on our guests, dispelling many of their myths about Kazakhstan.
The head of the AIFC began with a personal story. He grew up in a small town, lost his first USD 100 as a student trading forex, and dreamed of working on Wall Street. When he was offered the chance in 2016 to build a financial centre in Kazakhstan, he himself thought the idea was crazy. Today the AIFC has its own legislation modelled on the DIFC, English law, and its own court and arbitration centre. All the judges are from the United Kingdom, and the court is headed by Lord Burnett, the former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. I very much liked his explanation: we do not have centuries of judicial practice, so we simply imported trust. There are no comparable jurisdictions in Central Asia, and it is the best place to enter the region, both in terms of legal protection and in terms of taxes.
The head of Atameken gave a highly unconventional talk. He presented Kazakhstan not through dry figures but in a way that lets a foreigner understand at once that our economy is not simply growing: we are seeing long-term growth in human capital and institutions. He offered just three figures that, in his words, are almost impossible to fake.
The first is under-five child mortality. On this measure we trail the United States only slightly and are noticeably ahead of Brazil, even though around 40% of the population lives in rural areas. This means that vaccination and healthcare reach every village. As he put it, the country takes care of its future taxpayers and consumers.
The second is that 96.6% of people finish school. A Canadian gold mining company told him that accidents at mines are directly linked to the literacy of staff. Our people read instructions in three languages, so the engineers and geologists at our deposits are local, not expensive expats.
The third he illustrated with a photo of a pedestrian crossing. The rule of law, he said, begins not in the courtroom but on the street: here cars stop for pedestrians, and in court around 60% of administrative cases in which citizens and businesses sue the state are decided in their favour. A state that knows how to lose to its own citizen matters more to an investor than any incentives.
Separately, we asked two of our IT companies, which the country can be proud of, to speak. The founder of Sergek said that the company's name has become a common noun here meaning a fine. But since the system was launched, road deaths in Almaty have fallen by 40%, and the record from violation to payment of the fine is 19 seconds. Documentolog, which has spared us paper signatures, showed how it is now embedding AI agents in companies' business processes.
This was an entirely private initiative, and I am grateful to our speakers, who helped show the country as not only hospitable but also developed and modern. I think that if each of us promotes Kazakhstan abroad, we will get a good result both in attracting investment and in developing tourism.