760 Billion KZT Short: Kazakhstan's Budget Still Experiencing Issues

The budget crisis in Kazakhstan continues. Expenditures continue to exceed income, and tax revenues fall significantly short of planned targets, Orda.kz reports.

Economist Galymzhan Aitkazin discussed Kazakhstan's budget in Telegram. He noted that the collection of crucial taxes has not improved. 

As of October 1, the total revenues of the Republican budget amounted to 13.5 trillion tenge, including tax revenues of 8.1 trillion tenge.

Only 91.3% of the revenue plan was fulfilled. The Republican budget's expenditures amounted to 16.4 trillion tenge. Four trillion in transfers from the National Fund did not produce results.

The main items of tax revenue: value added tax (VAT) and corporate income tax (CIT) maintained their execution at the level of 70%. VAT revenues to the republican budget amounted to 3.6 trillion tenge (70.2% of the period's plan) and CIT revenues amounted to 2.2 trillion tenge, or 70.9% of the period's plan, notes Galymzhan Aitkazin.

The local budget, on the other hand, demonstrates efficiency: actual revenues reached almost 11 trillion tenge (6.6% more than planned), and tax revenues amounted to 5.4 trillion tenge (+14% to the plan). 

To illustrate the budget problems: taxes from the republican budget for the period January-September were collected by 760 billion tenge less than last year, although it was planned to collect 667 billion tenge more this year than in 2023, Galymzhan Aitkazin points out .

The economist also noted that in addition to transfers from the National Fund, the government received significant income in 2024 — dividends from national companies exceeded the expected amount by 774 billion tenge. The budget is still far from ideal.

In early October, it became known that almost twice as much money could be taken from the National Fund as was initially planned to alleviate the budget crisis.

Original Author: Nikita Drobny