OREANDA-NEWS. April 25, 2014. At the plenary session of the Majilis chaired by Kabibulla Dzhakupov, deputies approved in first reading the draft law "On amendments and additions to some legislative acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on government regulation of production and turnover of ethyl alcohol and alcohol products."

Introducing the draft law, Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister Bakhyt Sultanov noted that the development of the bill is conditioned by the need to protect the economic interests, economic security of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the life and health of citizens. The government should have an effective mechanism for influencing the participants in the legal relations arising in the process of production and turnover of ethyl alcohol and alcohol products.

"The bill limits the sale of alcoholic drinks for 15 hours per day," B. Sultanov said.

That is, as the Finance Minister explained, in order to limit the locations and time of the sale of alcoholic drinks, the bill makes provision for regulations to ban the sale of alcoholic drinks, except for restaurants, cafes and bars, from 9.00 pm to 12 pm, without division into weekdays and weekends, as well as to ban the sale of alcohol products at gas stations.

For the purpose of strengthening the government control in the field of production and turnover of ethyl alcohol and alcohol products through the introduction of innovative control methods over the production and reduction of shadow turnover of alcohol products, the bill makes provision for establishing a minimum percentage of capacity utilization and minimum production volumes, as well as introduction of modernized test devices to control the volume of ethyl alcohol and alcohol products.

In addition, the draft law includes provisions to tighten responsibility for violations of the requirements established by the bill in the retail sale of alcohol products and annual license tax for the right to sell alcohol products.