KAZRC is Kazakhstan's national mineral reporting code, developed by the KAZRC Association and admitted to the CRIRSCO family of standards in 2016. It sets minimum requirements for public reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves, used for AIX listings, while the Soviet-era GKZ system still governs the state balance of reserves.
KAZRC is the short name for the Code for Public Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves of Kazakhstan, the country's national reporting standard within the CRIRSCO family. It was written by the KAZRC Association, which serves as Kazakhstan's National Reporting Organisation inside CRIRSCO (the Committee for Mineral Reserves International Reporting Standards), and it follows the same three-part structure used by every CRIRSCO-family code: Exploration Results, Mineral Resources (Inferred, Indicated, Measured) and Mineral Reserves (Probable, Proved).
For anyone comparing codes across CRIRSCO member countries, KAZRC sits alongside JORC (Australasia), NI 43-101 (Canada), SAMREC (South Africa), PERC (Europe) and S-K 1300 (United States) as one of the national codes built on the shared CRIRSCO International Reporting Template. A side-by-side view of how these codes line up is covered in our CRIRSCO codes by country reference.
Kazakhstan was unanimously elected the tenth member of CRIRSCO in 2016. The decision was taken at a CRIRSCO meeting in Astana, formalising the KAZRC Association as the country's National Reporting Organisation and PONEN as the Recognised Professional Organisation for Competent Persons. That 2016 admission is the founding date for KAZRC as a recognised member code, though mandatory use of the code inside Kazakhstan's domestic legal system followed a slower, separate timeline set by the Subsoil Code and later government directives (below).
The legal hook for KAZRC inside Kazakhstan is the Code "On Subsoil and Subsoil Use," adopted 27 December 2017 and published the following day, replacing the older subsoil legislation dating to 2010. The 2017 Code restructured licensing for the mining industry and set a direction toward CRIRSCO-aligned reserves reporting, but it did not immediately retire GKZ (the Soviet-derived State Commission for Mineral Reserves system). In practice, GKZ and the new CRIRSCO-based approach ran in parallel for years after the Code took effect, with investors describing the result as a "double system" rather than a clean handover.
As of the most recent government direction, Kazakhstan runs GKZ and KAZRC side by side on purpose, not by accident. In December 2023 the government set out that CRIRSCO/KAZRC standards would apply to new mineral deposits starting in 2024, while the State Commission for Mineral Reserves keeps its authority over already-developed deposits and the state balance of reserves. The directive also raised the stakes for compliance, including accountability, up to criminal liability, for individuals who prepare KAZRC-standard reports incorrectly.
The practical effect for anyone operating in Kazakhstan: a single project can carry two parallel reserve figures, a GKZ state-balance number used for licensing and taxation, and a KAZRC public-report number used for investors, lenders and AIX disclosure. The two are not always the same figure, because the underlying category systems, drilling density rules and Competent Person sign-off requirements differ. Our practical GKZ-to-JORC conversion guide walks through the same category mismatch that applies when moving GKZ figures into a KAZRC public report.
National Reporting Organisation: KAZRC Association. CRIRSCO family since: 2016. Recognised Professional Organisation for Competent Persons: PONEN. Legal anchor: Subsoil and Subsoil Use Code (27 December 2017). Parallel system: GKZ state balance, still active for developed deposits.
KAZRC and JORC share the same CRIRSCO skeleton, so the core reporting logic (Exploration Results, Mineral Resources, Mineral Reserves, Competent Person sign-off) is identical in structure. The differences are mostly about who runs the system, what legal machinery sits behind it, and what other reporting system it has to coexist with.
| Aspect | KAZRC (Kazakhstan) | JORC Code (Australasia, 2012 edition) |
|---|---|---|
| Governing body | KAZRC Association (National Reporting Organisation) | Joint Ore Reserves Committee, sponsored by AusIMM, AIG and the Minerals Council of Australia |
| CRIRSCO family since | 2016 (tenth member) | Founding CRIRSCO member code |
| Base template | CRIRSCO International Reporting Template | CRIRSCO International Reporting Template |
| Competent Person body | PONEN (Recognised Professional Organisation) | AusIMM, AIG or another recognised professional organisation |
| Resource/Reserve categories | Exploration Results; Mineral Resources (Inferred, Indicated, Measured); Mineral Reserves (Probable, Proved) | Exploration Results; Mineral Resources (Inferred, Indicated, Measured); Ore Reserves (Probable, Proved) |
| Primary legal trigger | Subsoil and Subsoil Use Code; AIX Mining Company Rules for listed issuers | ASX Listing Rules, Chapter 5, and Appendix 5A |
| Parallel state system | GKZ state balance still runs for developed deposits | No parallel Soviet-derived state reserves ledger |
| Typical trigger for use | AIX listing, new-deposit disclosure, foreign-investment reporting | ASX-listed company disclosure, used globally as a reference standard |
The category mismatch between GKZ's A/B/C1/C2/P system and the JORC/KAZRC Measured-Indicated-Inferred and Proved-Probable structure is the same underlying conversion problem whether the target code is JORC, NI 43-101 or KAZRC. Our GKZ-to-JORC conversion reference covers the category mapping logic that also applies to a GKZ-to-KAZRC requalification.
KAZRC applies most directly to companies listed on the Astana International Exchange (AIX). AIX's Mining Company Rules, approved by the Astana Financial Services Authority, use a two-tier structure: Tier 1 for larger, more advanced issuers and Tier 2 for junior mining and exploration companies, with Tier 2 carrying exemptions from some of the standard net-profit and market-capitalisation listing tests. Under those rules, an issuer must show a Competent Person's Report compliant with JORC, NI 43-101 or KAZRC, so KAZRC is one of three accepted standards for AIX purposes rather than the only option, but it is the domestic default for Kazakhstan-incorporated issuers and the standard PONEN Competent Persons are qualified against.
Beyond the exchange, the December 2023 government direction extends KAZRC-standard reporting to new mineral deposits generally, meaning exploration and mining companies bringing a new deposit forward from 2024 onward are expected to produce a KAZRC-compliant Competent Person's Report even without a listing event attached. Projects already on the state balance under GKZ are not automatically pulled into that requirement; the dual-system split described above still applies.
The Recognised Professional Organisation responsible for Competent Persons under KAZRC is PONEN, the Professional Society of Independent Experts of the Subsurface. PONEN maintains its own institute of Competent Persons: specialists who evaluate deposits against the KAZRC standard, accept a code of ethics, and carry personal responsibility for the reports they sign. A KAZRC Competent Person's Report is only valid for AIX or state-directed public reporting purposes if the signing individual holds current PONEN membership (or equivalent recognised status), the same gatekeeping role AusIMM and AIG play for JORC and CIM plays for NI 43-101.
For due diligence on any KAZRC public report, checking the PONEN membership status of the named Competent Person is a direct, verifiable step, the same category of check covered in our compliance hub for CRIRSCO-family reports generally.
Moving a deposit's reserve position from the Soviet-derived GKZ system into a KAZRC public report is a requalification exercise, not a translation. The GKZ category ladder (A, B, C1, C2 for reserves, P1 through P3 for resources) does not map one to one onto KAZRC's Measured/Indicated/Inferred Resources and Proved/Probable Reserves; a Competent Person has to re-examine the underlying drilling density, sampling protocol and geological continuity evidence behind each GKZ block before assigning a KAZRC category. Most Soviet-era exploration files also carry a geodetic problem before any category work can start: coordinates recorded in Pulkovo 1942 have to be reprojected to WGS-84, and a large share of the source material exists only as scanned or paper archives that need OCR before the numbers inside them are usable at all.
CoreElement AI, founded in 2024 by Daniel Tonkopiy (CEO and Product Architect) and Zhambyl Suraganov (Cofounder), built its Soviet GKZ conversion module specifically for this problem: OCR on archive documents, Pulkovo 1942 to WGS-84 reprojection, and category mapping from GKZ A/B/C1/C2/P toward CRIRSCO-family classifications across the platform's 22 modules, which also cover JORC 2012, NI 43-101, KAZRC, SAMREC, PERC 2021 and S-K 1300. As of May 2026 the platform has digitised 4,859 documents through this pipeline, detailed further in our Soviet archive digitisation solution, and has run two pilot deployments with large enterprise mining operators in Kazakhstan.