ASTANA — Nearly 9.6 million foreign tourists visited Kazakhstan last year, two times more than the previous year, said Nurtas Karipbayev, chairman of the Tourism Industry Committee of the Kazakh Ministry of Tourism and Sports, at a June 6 briefing at the Central Communications Service.
A traveler takes a photo of Lake Kolsai in the Almaty Region. Photo credit: kazakhstan.travel
The number of Kazakh citizens traveling within the country increased by one million last year, reaching 9.6 million people.
“Last year, tax revenues to the budget from the tourism industry totaled 450 billion tenge (US$1 billion), 64 billion tenge (US$143.4 million) more than in 2022,” said Karipbayev.
According to him, Kazakhstan focuses on developing the investment potential of the tourism industry.
Last year, 117 new tourist sites worth 57 billion tenge (US$127.7 million) were opened in Kazakhstan. Some 300 investment projects worth 430 billion tenge (US$963.7 million) are at the implementation stage, and they are supposed to employ over 7,600 people.
By the end of this year, it is planned to complete 148 projects totaling 246 billion tenge (US$551.3 million).
