TEXT-S&P on National Maritime Shipping Co. Kazmortransflot (JSC)

(The following statement was released by the ratings agency)

April 11 - Standard & Poor's Governance Services said today it assigned its corporate governance score (CGS) on the National Maritime Shipping Co. Kazmortransflot (JSC) (KMTF) at 'CGS-4+'. KMTF is the only national maritime company in Kazakhstan. It was formed primarily to create a national merchant marine fleet for the Republic of Kazakhstan (foreign currency BBB-/Stable/A-3, local currency BBB/Stable/A-3) and to organize international sea shipping of domestic goods.

"The CGS on KMTF reflects the strong commitment by shareholders and management to enhance corporate governance procedures at the company that are not sufficiently developed to date," said Standard & Poor's governance analyst Elena Dubovitskaya. "The score is largely constrained by the unbalanced board structure and weak information disclosure practices."

The overall CGS on KMTF is the result of four component scores on the global scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high). For each component the score is shown in brackets:

-- Ownership structure and external influences

(5+)

-- Shareholder rights and stakeholder relations

(6)

-- Transparency, disclosure, and audit