In Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, the land for street trade will be sold through online auctions using blockchain technology. This is reported by Informburo with reference to Nurlan Zhakupov, the chairman of the company Astana SPK, which is a subordinate organization of the mayoralty of Astana.

“In the future, in order to avoid any complaints, on the instructions of the akim (head of the administration) and within the digitalization program, we are introducing a blockchain platform. All auctions, all allocation of sites for the competition will be held online. And there will be no human factor. Now the filing of all documents is online, while the auction is held live. We are developing the electronic auction platform ourselves,” Zhakupov said.

He explained that the auction is held only if more than four applications are claimed for the site. If there are fewer applications, the site is given to the one who applied first. An entrepreneur who has received a land without an auction pays a fixed rate of 20 thousand tenge per square meter per year. In the case of an auction, it can grow to several million.

Zhakupov said that in September 2018, there will be another innovation – legal street points of trade will be equipped with QR-codes through which citizens can get information about whether the commercial activity on this site is legal.

In December 2017, the government of Kazakhstan approved the program “Digital Kazakhstan”. Its goals are to create high-tech infrastructure, increase digital literacy of the population, digitization of government agencies, development of the digital ecosystem. It is expected that by 2020 the program will help create up to 300,000 new jobs, increase the share of Internet users to 82% (in 2017 – 77%), increase the share of electronic commerce in the total retail trade to 2.6% (for 2017 – 1.5%).