ASTANA – Kazakhstan’s defense expenditures rose by 6.8% to 715.7 billion tenge ($1.5 billion) in January-August this year, achieving a 57.6% execution level of the adjusted 2023 sector budget, Finprom.kz reported on Oct. 26.
Photo credit: asker.kz
Overall, Kazakhstan had planned to allocate over 1.2 trillion tenge ($2.5 billion) from the state budget to defense this year, 11.6% more than in 2022.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Kazakhstan’s military expenditures accounted for 0.5% of GDP, significantly lower than other Central Asian countries. Military spending of the Kyrgyz Republic represented 1.5% of its GDP, while Tajikistan’s stood at 1%. Data for Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are not available.
The three countries with the largest military expenditures comprised 56% of global military spending. The United States, which has the world’s largest military budget, allocated 3.5% of its GDP to defense. China’s military spending was 1.6% of its GDP, and Russia’s was 4.1%.
Last year, Israel’s military spending reached 4.5% of its GDP, while Ukraine witnessed this figure soaring from 3.2% in 2021 to 33.5% in 2022.
Meanwhile, capital investments in public administration, defense, and mandatory social security in Kazakhstan reached 98.8 billion tenge ($210.2 million) between January and September, a 21.9% increase in monetary terms and 15% in real terms compared to the same period in 2022.
