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Ka$hakhstan
"Ithmaar may have been one of the first Gulf firms into Kazakhstan, but certainly not the last. That was just the beginning," says Jithesh Gopi, head of research at Bahrain-based SICO Investment Bank.
Kuwait-based Gulf Finance House (GFH) estimates it will invest $10bn in the Central Asian country. It plans to develop a series of energy business clusters in partnership with the government.
"Europe, Southern Asia and China continue to rely on the supply of Kazakh hydrocarbons and the projected growth in demand over the coming years is formidable," Mehran Jamsheer, deputy CEO of GFH, tells Arabian Business.
The Kazakh government is certainly playing its part in trying to stimulate the stuttering economy.
This year it warned mining concession-holders that their assets would be seized unless they agreed to develop them productively.
"This is not a renationalisation of the country, and the logic is very simple: people have these assets and they're not exploring them, and therefore the economy is suffering," insists Vosgimorukian. "The government's view now is: ‘you're committed, so now you're going to mine it', and so now people urgently need to find finance for the exploration phase and for work programmes - or sell up."
Oil and gas are not the only riches to be found. Kazakhstan has 15 percent of the world's uranium reserves and hopes to become the world's biggest producer of the metal.
Next year it plans to produce 12,826 metric tonnes of uranium, overtaking Canada and Australia's production.
These resources are increasingly sought after with the number of nuclear reactors expected to jump 30 percent by 2010 according to the World Nuclear Association. The UAE alone is planning to build up to 14 nuclear power plants at a cost of around $80bn.
"The goal of all the nations out there right now is to lock in some of these resources at the moment while they're tight," says McKinnon at Al Mal Capital.
"So it makes sense to begin to establish relationships and trading relationships - and then expand those relationships so that you have access to the resources of the future, such as uranium."
Not all of Kazakhstan's natural wealth is to be found deep underground. It is the world's eighth-biggest food exporter and sixth-biggest wheat exporter, with 220 million hectares of agricultural land.
UAE President and Abu Dhabi Ruler HH Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has already expressed an interest in investing in Kazakhstan's vast agricultural industry in a bid to diversify the UAE's sources of food imports.
The soaring cost of food staples and subsequent export bans are putting increasing pressure on Gulf governments to purchase agricultural land abroad to secure their own supplies. According to the World Bank, the price of wheat rose by 120 percent in 2007 alone.
Abu Dhabi-based food manufacturer, Emirates Foodstuff and Mineral Water (AGTHIA) plans to establish a strategic alliance with Kazakhstan as it looks to secure lower transportation costs.
The food company is also considering acquiring land in the country.
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