Kazakhstan: no change in macro trends in 2M24; puzzles remain
Recently, the Bureau of National Statistics, the Ministry of Finance, and the National Bank of Kazakhstan published a new set of monthly macroeconomic statistics, and the major takeaway is that the country’s economic trends haven't changed much. Last week, we published a report that presented a brief snapshot of such developments, and in this report, we provide some additional color on recent trends in foreign trade and budgetary performance. Managing the 2024 budget may be challenging again as an excessively strong (and stable) tenge becomes a sort of cap on an essential portion of budgetary revenues linked to the oil price and the exchange rate.
The recent foreign trade and monetary statistics, together with the regular economic statistics, confirm that the trends that emerged in 2023 after the series of shocks in 2020-2022 remain the same. Challenges, such as a constrained flow of regular tax revenues associated with the exchange rate and the oil price, remain the same, as well. In 2023, one-off measures helped to find some solution and finance expenditures in full. It is yet to be seen how the government decides to address the same challenge this year.
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