Astana, 21 October. Over three years Kazakhstan spent 118 billion tenge on upgrading its border crossings, about 59 billion of it on the Kazakh-Uzbek section, yet the queues have not gone away, MP Aleksandr Danilov said at a session of the Kurultai; Finance Minister Madi Takiyev attributed them to growing traffic.
"Why has the modernisation of the checkpoints still not solved the problem of systemic congestion at our borders? And what is the ministry doing now to really increase the capacity of the checkpoints?" Danilov asked the minister. The question came up while MPs were considering an agreement on opening customs offices of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in each other's countries.
Takiyev acknowledged the problem. Nine checkpoints have been upgraded in two years, he said, and work on the tenth, the pedestrian Zhibek Zholy crossing in Saryagash district of Turkestan region, will be completed in October: it will be able to handle up to 70,000 people and 200 buses a day. Traffic, however, is growing faster: "Even though we are modernising the checkpoints, passenger flows and freight volumes continue to grow. In nine months alone, 650,000 vehicles crossed the border. That is almost 20% more than last year," the minister said. To raise capacity, checkpoints are switching to round-the-clock operation and customs to a three-shift schedule. At the same time the minister made it clear that the queues at the border will not disappear entirely.
Separately, the minister told Ulysmedia who is paying for Zhibek Zholy. Nine customs posts were rebuilt with borrowed money, more than 28 billion tenge in international loans went into modernising customs points, according to the outlet, and a system for monitoring staff was set up: about 200 cameras were installed at each post, with artificial intelligence connected to the monitoring. Zhibek Zholy, through which about 55,000 people a day passed in 2024, was not part of that project: it is being upgraded with money from private Kazakh companies, and such reconstruction, according to Takiyev, was personally approved by the president. The minister did not name the companies but insisted that there is no corruption element in such financing.
On the sponsors, the minister put it this way: "We still have people who want to help."
At a briefing after the session, journalists asked how many customs officers had been held liable for corruption since the start of the year. Takiyev did not give an exact number but admitted: "But such cases exist. They exist on Kazakhstan's border with Uzbekistan, and on the border with China. Most of all, on the Uzbek direction. We are talking about bribes, for example, for crossing the border faster." The authorities are trying to fight this through digitalisation: the KazCargo system lets carriers plan a border crossing in advance and book a place in the queue. Since last year, according to the minister, transit from China to Russia has been tracked by the Digital Silk Road system: a vehicle is monitored along its whole route, and when it crosses the border it is known what cargo it carries.
What it means: The money for the checkpoints has been spent, nine posts have been upgraded and placed under cameras with artificial intelligence, but traffic is growing by almost a fifth a year, and the minister does not promise that the queues will disappear entirely. At the same time, the Finance Ministry admits to bribery at customs and is relying on an electronic queue.
Who benefits: A fast border is needed above all by carriers and exporters whose goods sit in queues. The queues themselves, according to Takiyev, breed bribes "for crossing the border faster"; with electronic booking in KazCargo the ministry is trying to cut off this source of income. How much the delays on the Uzbek direction cost businesses is not stated in the sources.
Background: On the same day the Kurultai ratified the agreement with Uzbekistan on opening offices of the two countries' customs services, signed on 15 November 2025.
List of sources used: Ulysmedia, Ulysmedia, Kazinform, Kazinform, НЕХабар, Ulysmedia, Zakon.kz, Ulysmedia
Artificial intelligence was used in preparing this material.
