Astana, 11 November. The Higher Audit Chamber found financial violations worth 51 billion tenge in the science sector and a further 47 billion tenge of inefficient planning and use of funds, the chamber said after its state audit, the results of which its chairman Alikhan Smailov presented at a session of the Kurultai.
Science funding rose from 122 billion to 262 billion tenge in 2022–2025, but the share of science in the economy stayed at 0.16% of GDP against a target of 1%. The state's share of funding grew from 55% to 82%, Smailov told the session. Four programme documents on developing science were in force in 2021–2025, and three of them were terminated early, the auditors noted.
Of 393 research tasks approved for 2023–2025, 149 worth 67 billion tenge were not carried out, Smailov said. Competitions in 2025 were announced up to 208 days late, and the transfer of expert materials to the national science councils was delayed by up to 93 days. The auditors also pointed to conflict-of-interest risks: 84 of the 225 members of science councils were in research groups on 127 projects worth 52 billion tenge, and another 27 council members were scientific supervisors of projects.
The return from completed work is limited, Smailov said: of 141 completed projects, 38, or 27%, achieved stable sales over the past three years, while the other 103 projects worth 22 billion tenge did not reach the expected results in output and sales. The Science Fund puts the commercialisation of developments at 44%, but on a comparable basis for the reporting year it was 16%. A further 62 billion tenge went to 79 projects of programme-targeted funding without a breakdown of expenses.
Materials on 36 cases were passed to the authorised bodies for administrative liability, and on three more facts to law enforcement, the chamber said. The chamber proposes digitalising the management of science and introducing end-to-end accounting that would show a project's path from allocation of money to result and application. Kurultai deputy Darkhan Akhmediev said a committee will take the implementation of the recommendations under parliamentary oversight, and cited audit data: the share of spending on experimental design and development fell from 12.8% in 2022 to 4.7% in 2025.
What it means: Spending on science more than doubled in three years, while the audit showed a gap between costs and results: stable sales exist in a little over a quarter of completed projects, and some projects received money without a detailed breakdown of expenses.
What we know now: The audit gives the amounts of violations and inefficient spending, the number of materials passed on and the direction of the recommendations. Smailov said 13 billion tenge must be recovered and more than 19 million tenge was returned during the audit. The reports do not name the organisations and officials to whom the passed materials relate, or the deadlines for carrying out the recommendations.
Background: The Higher Audit Chamber conducts state audits of the use of budget funds and assets; the Kurultai is Kazakhstan's parliament. R&D means research and experimental development: according to Akhmediev, the experimental design stage shows whether a scientific idea can become a working technology. Commercialisation means the share of developments that reached sales; according to the auditors, the difference between 44% and 16% comes from the way of counting.
