Kazakhstani businesses point out competition as obstacle to their activities

The National Bank of Kazakhstan has interviewed 3,400 enterprises from all over the country and found that competition is the key obstacle to doing business according to 31.4% of respondents.

Among other obstacles the respondents mentioned the overall condition of Kazakhstan’s economy (30.9%); the tax level (28.1%); a lack of qualified staff (26.3%); the search for customers (25.1%); complexity of obtaining licenses and permissions (16.6%); complexity of debit debt returning (14.9%) and access to financing (14.4%).

In similar surveys over the past years, the condition of the economy was always ahead of market competition in terms of the number of respondents’ replies. For instance, this indicator overperformed competition by 0.7 points in the fourth quarter of 2023. The surveys started mentioning the tax burden level only in Q4 last year with a lack of qualified staff introduced in the first quarter of 2024.

According to Rustem Orazalin, the director of the monetary policy department, the enterprise monitoring in the first quarter of this year revealed that the increase in prices for ready-to-use products and raw materials slowed down. However, the respondents reported a lower negative impact of the tenge exchange rate.

The National Bank reported that ready products price increase continues to slow down as demand for these products has grown. The average profitability of sales (before taxes) slightly decreased to 22.9% and has remained stable for many years. In early May, MPs from the Aq Jol (Ak Zhol) political party suggested that the government cancel the mandatory marking of goods, arguing that many small and medium-sized businesses would go bankrupt.