Almaty and Astana Set to Retain Central Asia’s Economic Lead
Almaty long combined Kazakhstan’s political and commercial functions and established itself as Central Asia’s leading business center. After Astana became Kazakhstan’s capital, the two cities developed increasingly complementary roles, with Almaty remaining the region’s largest business and financial hub while Astana accumulated political, institutional and corporate weight. Kazakhstan’s updated figures put Astana’s growth at about 10% and Almaty’s at about 5%. Together, the two cities generated roughly $107 billion in 2025. Together, they have become a two-city engine anchoring much of Central Asia’s commerce. Almaty and Astana benefit from an economic scale unmatched elsewhere in Central Asia. Kazakhstan alone accounts for more than half of the region’s GDP and roughly two-thirds of its inward FDI stock, according to TCA’s Central Asia Balance Sheet. That scale helps generate the fiscal resources needed to build and maintain the municipal infrastructure that supports business activity. Kazakhstan also has Central Asia’s most developed capital markets. The combination of the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) in Almaty and the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) and Astana International Exchange (AIX) in Astana gives companies access to equity, debt, institutional investors and financial infrastructure at a scale no other market in the region currently matches. Kazakhstan is also the only Central Asian country with an investment-grade sovereign rating, lowering the country-risk premium and helping reduce financing costs for companies and projects relative to lower-rated regional markets. These advantages have been reinforced over decades. Almaty and Astana have long served as regional bases for major global companies, creating an established ecosystem of corporate management, finance, professional services and skilled labor. That track record, in turn, strengthens their ability to attract further investment and regional headquarters. Tashkent and Bishkek are also growing rapidly Then there is Tashkent. Uzbekistan’s political and commercial capital had an economy of about $29 billion in 2025, about 40% the size of Almaty’s and three-quarters that of Astana. Tashkent has also experienced rapid growth, with its economy growing by 11.3% in real terms in 2025, according to preliminary national figures. Tashkent benefits from Uzbekistan’s demographic scale. The country’s population is almost twice Kazakhstan’s, giving its capital access to a much larger domestic market and labor pool. But that scale also raises the need for sustained job creation and continued investment in housing and infrastructure. If productivity and investment fail to keep pace with population growth, the demographic advantage could increasingly act as a constraint rather than help Tashkent close the gap with Almaty and Astana. Almaty and Astana, meanwhile, generate substantially more economic output per resident. In 2025, Gross Regional Product (GRP) per capita was approximately $29,900 in Almaty and $23,700 in Astana, compared with about $9,300 in Tashkent, using reporting-year average exchange rates. These figures measure output per resident, not labor productivity, household income or living standards. Like Tashkent, Bishkek combines the roles of political capital and principal economic center. On the reporting years used here, however, its economy is only about 30% as large. Its economy grew by 15.8% in 2024, according to Kyrgyzstan’s...
