Foreign investors won’t be required to have employment quotas in Kazakhstan

Published February 9, 2022 20:59 (modified July 20, 2022 12:34)

The Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Population suggests changing rules regulating quotas for the foreign workforce. The government is planning for foreigners with investor visas to not be required to get permission for work in Kazakhstan as the authorities don’t want the investment attractiveness of the country to deteriorate.

Any foreigner with an investor visa will be able to work in the country with no limitations as long as his or her visa is valid.

According to internal rules of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan, an investor visa might be issued for five years or less if a person’s passport is expiring earlier in that period.

To obtain this kind of visa an applicant has to possess an investment agreement with any of Kazakhstan’s authorized bodies, to be part of an ongoing investment project in key sectors of the reprocessing industry or be a member of the Foreign Investors’ Council of Kazakhstan.

The draft of the new rule that might simplify the work of investors in Kazakhstan is going to be publicly discussed until February 16.

As the Ministry of Labor reported, in 2021 there were issued 29,300 quotas for the foreign workforce even though some of these quotas remained unused. As of mid-January 2022, there were 14,600 foreign employees in the country.

The quotas for the foreign workforce in Kazakhstan this year are the same as they were last year: 0.31% of the entire workforce in the country. This rule has been in force since February 1.