Food Spending in Kazakhstan Tops Half of Consumer Budgets

Kazakhstan, Central Asia's largest economy, ranks among the ten countries with the highest shares of consumer spending devoted to food in an international comparison. National figures show that food purchases continue to consume more than half of household consumer budgets despite rising cash incomes. According to international statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), residents of Kazakhstan spent approximately 42% of their consumer budgets on food in 2025. The USDA measure covers food and nonalcoholic beverages purchased for consumption at home, excluding restaurant meals, alcohol, and tobacco. Higher shares were recorded in Nigeria, Myanmar, and Laos, as well as neighboring Uzbekistan. By comparison, food accounted for roughly a quarter of consumer spending in Russia and 6.4% in the U.S. Investment company Halyk Finance noted in a June 2025 analysis that Kazakhstan ranked sixth in the USDA comparison for 2023. Kazakhstan's Bureau of National Statistics uses a different food category, which also includes alcohol and tobacco. In the first quarter of 2026, this category accounted for 48.6% of household cash expenditures and approximately 54% of consumer spending. Consumer spending covers purchases of goods and services, while total cash expenditures also include debt repayments, taxes, and transfers to other households. Nonfood goods represented 19.9% of cash expenditures, services 21.7%, and another 7.6% went toward repaying loans and other debts. Halyk Finance found that this national food category had accounted for more than half of household cash expenditures for five consecutive years by early 2025. Since January 2026, however, the bureau has classified spending at cafes and restaurants as services rather than food expenditures. A decline in the reported food share compared with previous years therefore cannot automatically be interpreted as an improvement in living standards. The first-quarter share varied sharply by region, reaching 57.5% in the Zhetysu region, 56% in the Mangystau region, and 54.7% in the East Kazakhstan region. The figure was 41.2% in the capital, Astana, and 47.7% in Almaty. These differences reflect household incomes, food prices, the cost of services, and consumption patterns. Annual spending on food and nonalcoholic beverages in Kazakhstan averaged $1,292 per person in 2025, an increase of 13.9% from the previous year. Meat and meat products accounted for the largest share of the food budget in the second quarter of 2026. The bureau's household spending figures show that an average household spent 61,248 tenge, approximately $135, per month on them, about one-third of its food and nonalcoholic beverage expenditures. Bread and cereals accounted for about 14%, while dairy products represented approximately 12.6%. In the first quarter of 2026, average per capita cash income was 399,819 tenge, approximately $880 over three months, or about $294 per month. In local currency, the figure rose 12.9% year over year, but this was a nominal increase that did not account for inflation. In September, annual inflation was 9.3%, while food prices rose 8.5% year over year. For lower-income households, even moderate increases in the prices of basic groceries can significantly reduce the amount available for other needs....