In Kazakhstan, antitrust officials will monitor fuel prices closely.

“Overall, we expect the market to regulate the situation. The government will act as a limiter to prevent an increase in fuel prices. This implies a process of liberalization,” commented Satkaliev.

According to him, the government has all the necessary mechanisms for response and control, and the antimonopoly agency can initiate an investigation if a particular network starts to receive high monopoly profits.

“According to our forecasts, the first increase will not exceed 5 tenge. We are guiding market participants with this indicator. We will respond urgently to each case if we see that prices are rising too sharply... We tentatively see this first step at around 210 tenge per liter. We do not expect traumatic changes. There have been reports of up to 400 tenge, but those are thoughtless scenarios. The government will not allow such an increase,” clarified the minister.

Earlier, at a government briefing, the Minister of Energy stated that Kazakhstan has decided to gradually increase prices for fuel and liquefied petroleum gas. It was preliminarily specified that prices would start to rise from February of this year.