Kazakhstan’s economy reaches pre-pandemic level

Kazakhstan’s economy reached a pre-pandemic level of production, said the International Monetary Fund’s Mission Chief Nicolas Blancher. According to him, Kazakhstan continues demonstrating strong recovery dynamics. He also highly appreciated the measures of the country on strengthening financial supervision, inflation targeting, digitalization of tax and budget administration, and commitments to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. In addition, the expert emphasized, the inflation in the country may still increase, therefore, he considers it expedient to tighten the monetary policy of the National Bank.

“As you’ve seen, the National Bank of Kazakhstan has increased interest rates in recent months, by three times, by 0.25 points. And of course this is the sound reaction to the price pressures that we have seen. We think that there might be a need for further action, further tightening of monetary policy given the dynamics of inflation which is still increasing as well as inflation expectations most recently. Our projection for this year is that growth will be of about 3.7 percent for 2021,” said Nicolas Blancher, IMF Mission Chief for Kazakhstan.

Translation by Saniya Sakenova

Editing by Galiya Khassenkhanova