ASTANA – The Kazakh Senate adopted changes to the national budget for 2018-2020 during its Oct. 25 plenary session.
Photo credit: parlam.kz.
The updated document increased the expected exchange rate per dollar from 340 tenge to 350 tenge and raised the expected price for a barrel of oil from $55 to $60. It also incorporates the revised data from 2017 and projects the nominal GDP in 2018 to reach 58.2 trillion tenge (US$157.37 billion), one trillion tenge (US$2.7 billion) higher than the April indicator.
Real GDP growth has been maintained at 3.8 percent and inflation remained within the 5-7 percent corridor.
With rising oil prices, exports are forecast to grow to $56.5 billion, with imports declining to $32.2 billion.
Revenues are expected to reach 5.718 billion tenge (US$15.46 billion). In light of recently establishing the Turkestan region, an additional 15.1 billion tenge (US$40.8 million) will be transferred from the Turkestan region budget to the Shymkent city budget.
The plan also envisions spending at 9.6 trillion tenge (US$25.95 billion), a 12.6 billion tenge (US$34 million) increase from the previously voiced figure.
The National Fund, which accumulates excess revenues fro the country’s oil and gas industry, is expected to receive 3.1 trillion tenge (US$8.38 billion), 1.2 trillion tenge (US$3.2 billion) higher than the previous figure.
Senate deputies also adopted changes to the law on national statistics. First Vice Minister of National Economy Ruslan Dalenov said the bill is designed to improve legal regulation in state statistics.
“It is also meant to increase transparency of state bodies working in statistics, collection, processing and spread of information, increasing the quality of the collected data and official statistical information,” he added.
