The lower chamber of the Kazakhstani Parliament has approved a draft law on the appointment of foreign IT company representatives who will be responsible for liaising with authorities in Kazakhstan.

In September last year, we covered an initiative to “base” foreign IT companies in Kazakhstan. At that time, it was planned to restrict activities of IT companies that did not have state registration in Kazakhstan.

Now, instead of requiring the registration of branches, it is planned to oblige foreign IT companies to appoint representatives for cooperation with the authorized body—the Republic of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Information and Social Development (the Ministry).

Such representatives, who do not need to be residents of or reside in Kazakhstan, would be required to respond within 24 hours to the Ministry’s inquires related to deleting content that is recognized as illegal and prohibited for dissemination.

It is expected that the new rules will affect social media and messaging platforms whose daily audience in Kazakhstan exceeds 100,000 users within a month. The draft law also introduces an obligation for IT companies to install a program that would calculate the number of users in Kazakhstan.

Platforms for electronic commerce, financial services, as well as companies’ intra-office messenger and email services would not fall under the new rules.

If the draft law is adopted, there will be a six-month transition period from the law’s enactment date. Within this period, foreign IT companies would need to appoint representatives for cooperating with the Ministry.

We are carefully monitoring the status of the draft law and will keep you updated. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about this alert.