Interesting things are going on in the Kazakhstani notarial sphere.
Joint Stock Company “National Information Technologies” (“NIT”) has developed the software product “Unified Notary Information System” (“UNIS”). Information about the actions of all notaries of the country flows to the UNIS. From the same system, notaries take information about the actions of other notaries and through it receive information about citizens and organizations of Kazakhstan. Right and necessary thing.
But … the use of UNIS is paid and all notaries were obligated to connect to it. For refusing to pay a monthly subscription fee, the Ministry of Justice immediately deprives notaries of a license. It turns out, the state with imperious powers forces notaries to receive services of a private joint-stock company.
Good. This could be justified by the need to consolidate all the data, but …
The monthly subscription fee is 3,600 tenge. If we multiply this amount by 4,081 notaries in the country, it turns out that NIT receives monthly 14.7 million tenge, and a year – 176.3 million tenge. It turns out that for the whole period of the system’s operation the company received about 850 million tenge. Assuming that the development of the program costs about 100-120 million tenge (according to my estimates), then the project has a good profitability!
Usually I do not count other people’s money. If only they are earned by bona fide entrepreneurs in the free market. But here is a slightly different situation. Although JSC “NIT” is 100 percent state-owned company, it is still a joint-stock company. Consequently, its revenues do not go directly to the country’s budget, but arrive at its own disposal. And what they are wasting this money on, I do not know. Perhaps, on expensive offices, limousines and management bonuses. But in fact, this money consists of money of each of us who has ever used services of notaries. And they got there not by our goodwill, but by state coercion.
It is unclear who needs such a system.
To be honest, it is clear. But I dare not give vent to my suspicions.
In my opinion, the state administration should have been act in this way: since the state needs this information system (and its essence is really good, as I wrote above), it was necessary to pay for “NIT” services from the budget, and then transfer to balance of the state institution and collect the subscription fee from notaries only in the amount necessary to support and develop the UNIS. But not in a super-profitable scale. Or in a way as the author of the article suggests: to sell at cost to the Notary Chamber, but to prohibit legally getting profit from its use.
Yeah! How many more of these incomprehensible schemes of interaction between the state and private business are hidden from the outside view and accidentally emerge outward!
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