NUR-SULTAN – Kazakhstan’s GDP growth has accelerated to 3.5 percent in the first two months of 2021, Kazakh Economy Minister Alibek Kuantyrov said at a government meeting on Tuesday morning. The real sector became the engine for sustained economic growth.
The government session during their session. Photo credit: primeminister.kz.
“During this period, the main trends were accelerating growth in the real sector, rebounding growth in trade and communications after the decline in January this year, and dynamic investment growth in the non-extractive sector. In January and February, real sector growth was 4.7 percent. The service sector grew by 2.1 percent,” said Kuantyrov.
Industrial production grew 4.7 percent, including 3.9 percent growth in manufacturing. Other industries that saw a notable increase include pharmaceuticals (17 percent), apparel (12.8 percent), and engineering (9.2 percent).
The mining industry is showing strong growth of 6.4 percent, according to the minister, due to an increase in oil production by 9.2 percent, natural gas by 8.9 percent and metal ores by 1.2 percent.
Akmola and Pavlodar regions and the city of Nur-Sultan showed progress on all major macroeconomic indicators, but Aktobe and Mangistau regions in western Kazakhstan lagged behind all other regions.
Kazakh Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov stressed that it is important to maintain and accelerate economic growth in the coming months under “today’s difficult conditions”.
“It is necessary to increase work to increase people’s income, create jobs and diversify the economy,” Smailov said, noting that the government has prepared an action plan for 2022.
He directed his government and local officials to work to stabilize the prices of socially significant goods days after disinformation about alleged sugar shortages had people rushing to stores to buy up stocks, causing sugar to run off the shelves disappeared.
Given the rapidly changing situation in certain markets, Smailov also stressed that efforts to control and contain inflation would be intensified.
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