Aq Jol Deputies Request to Clarify Customs Gap with China

Members of the Aq Jol faction have submitted a formal inquiry to Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov regarding discrepancies in customs data at the Kazakh-Chinese border and measures to address smuggling, Orda.kz reports.

Deputy Yerzhan Beisenbayev voiced the request during Majilis' plenary session. He highlighted the importance of VAT revenue from imports for the national budget.

However, a significant portion of imports enter Kazakhstan without proper customs clearance, through economic smuggling, thereby damaging the interests of the national economy and budget revenues. Open sources have published data that, based on the results of 2024, a record discrepancy was revealed in customs statistics for imports from China to Kazakhstan, amounting to 13 billion 750 million dollars. According to experts, the shortfall in VAT in the budget of Kazakhstan on 'gray imports' is one and a half billion dollars, or 850 billion tenge, not to mention the lost customs duties,
emphasized Yerzhan Beisenbayev.

He recalled that Vice Minister of Trade and Integration Kairat Torebayev had previously explained the multi-billion dollar gap as being due to differences in customs accounting methods.

Torebayev noted that China includes in its statistics all goods crossing into Kazakhstan, even those destined for third countries. While Beisenbayev acknowledged this as a possibility, he questioned whether methodology alone could fully explain such a large discrepancy.

Even if we are talking about half of the amounts mentioned, we consider such budget losses unacceptable. Let us recall that in the conclusion of the Supreme Audit Chamber to the government's report on the execution of the republican budget, an entire section was devoted to discrepancies with China's customs statistics. Back in 2022, at a parliamentary meeting, the Head of State noted the real mess on the border with China and instructed the Prosecutor General's Office, together with the Ministry of Finance, the Financial Monitoring Agency and other interested bodies, to conduct a comprehensive audit and ensure order at the customs border,
added the deputy. 

According to him, the customs data gap was $8.4 billion in 2023 and has grown to over $13 billion in 2024.

The Aq Jol faction requested the Prime Minister to:

• Provide the official government position on the $13.75 billion discrepancy in customs data between Kazakhstan and China
• Clarify what portion of the gap stems from accounting methodology and what may be linked to gray imports or smuggling
• Report on the government’s planned actions to combat smuggling and ensure complete budget collection from imports, including expected additional VAT and related payments

Original Author: Anastasia Prilepskaya