Almaty accounts for the lion’s share of R&D expenditures and personnel in the country and a large share of its SMEs.62 This is important because of the need to rebalance business innovation from SOEs to private businesses: Almaty City appears best positioned for this, thanks to its sheer size and unique concentration of privately owned financial institutions and firms. Moreover, the broadband penetration rate (a crucial enabler of research activities) in Almaty City is by far the highest in Kazakhstan. To encourage productive competition between Astana and Almaty City in scientific and technological innovation, excessive concentration of public support on Astana’s cluster should be avoided in future. However, the Regional Development Programme until 2020 emphasises the role of Shymkent and Aktobe as “first-level cities” and “national level economic growth centres”.