Kazakhstan plans to borrow money from the World Bank to restore the Northern Aral Sea and repair water canals in the Syr Darya basin. Only for projects whose cost has already been disclosed by the authorities, about 80 billion tenge will be required. With these funds, the government expects to reduce water losses and increase the volume of the Northern Aral to 34 cubic kilometers. This was announced by Deputy Prime Minister Serik Zhumangarin. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
The authorities want to concrete 15 communal canals in the Kyzylorda region. Their reconstruction will cost approximately 22.7 billion tenge. Of these, eight canals worth 3.9 billion tenge are to be included in the first phase of World Bank financing, and another seven projects worth 18.8 billion tenge in the second.
In addition, the government is preparing design and estimate documentation for the repair of another 33 canals. The estimated cost of construction work for these facilities is 56.8 billion tenge.
Thus, only for this pool of work, the authorities are preliminarily budgeting expenses of 79.5 billion tenge. At the same time, 5 projects worth 4.2 billion tenge are already being implemented in the region through the Islamic Development Bank.
Senator Ruslan Rustemov sent a request to the government. According to him, most of the canals in the Kyzylorda region were built back in the 1960s–1970s and are now in disrepair.
Due to the deterioration of infrastructure, water seeps into the ground before reaching the fields. Annual losses are estimated at up to 2 billion cubic meters. According to the deputy, this is almost half of all water losses in Kazakhstan.
In addition to concreting canals, the large-scale project involves saving the Aral Sea. For this purpose, the reconstruction of the Kokaral dam is planned — it will be raised by two meters.
To accumulate water resources, construction of a new reservoir on the Karaozek branch with a volume of 775 million cubic meters is also planned to begin this year.
As part of the modernization, the authorities want to repair more than 500 kilometers of irrigation networks and introduce automatic control on another 1.1 thousand kilometers. In total, the project includes more than 180 facilities in the Kyzylorda and Turkestan regions.
The government is now preparing documents to obtain state guarantees and attract a loan from the World Bank. By the end of 2026, the authorities expect to sign the corresponding credit agreement.
Earlier, Kursiv reported on how Tokayev proposed new measures to save the Aral Sea.