NUR-SULTAN (TCA) — Kazakhstan’s First President and Elbasy (Leader of the Nation) Nursultan Nazarbayev chaired a meeting of the Security Council on April 10 to review the results of the country’s socio-economic development in the first quarter of this year, the official website of the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan reported.
First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Alikhan Smailov reported on the first-quarter results.
In his words, in the first quarter of 2019, the positive dynamics of the country’s economic activity continued, as the gross domestic product increased by 3.8 percent, annual inflation rate dropped to 4.8 percent, investments in fixed assets increased by seven percent, and industrial production increased by 3.2 percent.
Chemical production, production of building materials, and mechanical engineering increased by 10 percent, while automobile production increased by 33 percent.
Growth in the construction sector was 8.9 percent during the period.
The volume of transport and warehousing services increased by 4.4 percent.
Growth of agricultural production was 3.6 percent.
Kazakhstan’s foreign trade turnover in January and February of 2019 increased by 7.5 percent, with exports increasing by 11.1 percent and imports increasing by 0.3 percent.
Domestic trade increased by 7.2 percent.
The amount of loans issued by the country’s second-tier banks during the first two months of 2019 amounted to 1.9 trillion tenge compared to the same period in 2018, an increase of 11 percent.
Unemployment rate in the labor market fell to 4.8 percent, and per capita income of the population in January-February increased in real terms by 9.4 percent compared with January-February 2018, the First Deputy Prime Minister reported.
