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Kazakhstan is among 30 countries with most polluted air in world - analysts

12.10.2023 14:00 1219

From January to August of this year, the volume of investments in environmental protection amounted to 164.4 billion tenge, which is 3.9 times higher than last year, El.kz reports with reference to Finprom.

In the same period of the previous year, this figure was equal to 42.2 billion tenge, a decrease of 60.8%.

The largest volume of investments in the regional context was in the Akmola region: 112.7 billion tenge compared to 2.4 billion tenge in January-August 2022, which is an increase of 47.2 times.

Atyrau and Turkestan regions rank second and third, respectively, with investments of 25.8 billion tenge (compared to 1.4 billion tenge in the previous year) and 9.9 billion tenge (compared to 3.2 billion tenge a year earlier).

It is worth noting that investments in this sector were noticed only in 8 out of 20 regions of Kazakhstan, while in the same period of the previous year there were 17 such regions.

Companies' own financial resources accounted for 75.1% of all investments, which is equal to 123.4 billion tenge compared to 20.5 billion tenge last year, showing a six-fold increase.

Non-bank borrowed resources amounted to 35.6 billion tenge (which is twice as much as the previous year), bank loans - 5.1 billion tenge (an increase of 7.4 times compared to last year), and funds from local budgets - 195.2 million tenge (compared to 2.8 billion tenge in the previous year).

For example, on October 5, 2023, Kazhydromet reported high levels of air pollution in six cities in Kazakhstan, and the next day in ten cities. According to forecasts for October 11, adverse weather conditions are expected in Almaty and Atyrau.

Kazakhstan ranked 30th among 111 countries in the ranking in terms of pollution, with a pollution index of 73. The higher the index, the more polluted the area is considered to be. Among the largest cities on the planet, Almaty is on the 48th position out of 251 with an index of 78.5.

This index is an assessment of the overall level of pollution in the world's cities, taking into account aspects such as air and water quality, garbage collection, cleanliness, noise and light pollution, the presence of greenery and the comfort of living in the context of ecology.

In the context of the CIS countries, Kazakhstan is second only to Azerbaijan in terms of pollution, while Belarus is the most environmentally friendly country in the CIS. The situation in Russia, Armenia, Ukraine and Moldova is also assessed as more favorable than in Kazakhstan.

The countries with the highest levels of pollution include Mongolia, Myanmar and Lebanon. The most environmentally friendly countries are Finland, Iceland and Estonia.