NUR-SULTAN – Starting January 23, Kazakh citizens are able to withdraw part of their pension savings to improve their housing conditions on an online platform run by the Otbasy Housing Construction and Saving Bank, a subsidiary of the Baiterek national holding.
The savings can be used to pay back a mortgage loan, buy new housing, pay a down payment, build a house, partially or fully repay the debt under long-term lease agreements and refinance a housing mortgage loan.
Only citizens whose pension savings exceed a sufficiency threshold determined by the government, will be eligible for this.
Based on the government calculation, to be eligible to withdraw the money, a 20-year-old person should have at least 1,710,000 tenge (US$4,060) on a pension account and the required amount increases by age.
The eligible amount of pension savings subject to withdrawal will equal the difference between the pension savings and the sufficiency threshold.
Kazakhstan’s Unified Accumulative Pension Fund totalled $30.6 billion as of Jan. 1, 2021.
The decree was signed by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, as part of the broader effort to reform the country’s pension system. In his state-of-the-nation address in 2019, Tokayev first voiced his suggestion to allow citizens to use their pension savings for housing, medical or educational purposes. The latter two options are still to be determined by the government.
