Kazakhstan's economy grew by 6.5% in 2025, and imports of goods reached $64.8 billion, almost 60% more than in 2021. On those numbers alone, the case for a foreign company to take the country seriously looks self-evident. Yet in the same year real household incomes fell, net foreign direct investment turned negative for the first time in two decades, and Samruk-Kazyna, the country's largest corporate group, almost doubled its contracts with domestic producers. A credible market assessment in Kazakhstan has to explain how all of these facts can be true at once, and what they mean for a company that is not yet in the market.

This analysis uses the years 2021 to 2025 as its evidence base, treats 2026 as the current reference point and looks forward to 2030. It answers a single question. Does Kazakhstan offer a sufficiently large, accessible and commercially viable market for a foreign company, and how is that opportunity likely to evolve? Because the relevant market differs by product, sector evidence is used to illustrate how the opportunity behaves rather than to size any one industry. Two adjacent questions are deliberately left outside its scope. Whether the opportunity justifies committing capital is a question of investment feasibility in Kazakhstan rather than of market opportunity, and it is a separate decision. Which route to take once the answer is positive is covered in our analysis of market entry in Kazakhstan for foreign mid-market companies.

The Short Answer

Kazakhstan is a real market, not a statistical illusion, but the part of it that a new foreign entrant can win is materially smaller than headline figures suggest, and in several sectors it is shrinking by design. Three forces explain the gap. The first is concentration. Two cities with about a fifth of the population generate more than a third of GDP, and a small number of state-linked buyers account for a large share of B2B and B2G spending. The second is filtered access, because localisation policy has moved from declarations into procurement rules, registers and long-term offtake contracts. The third is that part of the growth recorded between 2022 and 2025 came from sources that will not repeat with the same intensity, namely a step change in oil output, fiscal and quasi-fiscal stimulus, credit-fuelled consumption and sanctions-related trade.

The durable opportunity through 2030 lies where Kazakhstan's multi-year investment programmes create demand for technology, equipment and expertise that the domestic industrial base cannot yet supply, and in urban consumer categories where modern, formal channels are consolidating. In the first of these, the window narrows with each year that localisation deepens.

The Evidence Base for a Market Assessment in Kazakhstan From 2021 to 2026

The indicators below are the ones that shape market opportunity most directly. They are official figures unless marked as approximations.

Data from the Bureau of National Statistics, the National Bank of Kazakhstan, Halyk Finance and the World Bank. Values marked ≈ are calculated from officially reported growth rates and may differ slightly from the latest revised data. GDP growth for 2021 is the official estimate published in February 2022, and for 2024 it is the updated official estimate. Data for 2025 and 2026 are preliminary.

Three features of this baseline matter more than any single number. The economy grew in every year, but through a sequence of shocks. Inflation exceeded 20% in 2022, the tenge lost almost a fifth of its dollar value between its 2021 average and the end of 2024 before recovering sharply in 2026, and the 2025 growth peak owed much to a single oil project. Imports grew by almost 60% in dollar terms, which would normally be an unambiguous signal for foreign suppliers, but here the increase partly reflects re-exports, price effects and household borrowing. And foreign direct investment moved against the trend in trade, which says something about how foreign companies themselves have been reading the market.

Six Shifts That Reshaped the Market Opportunity Between 2021 and 2025

1. Growth accelerated, but its engines were partly one-off

After growth of roughly 3% to 5% a year between 2021 and 2024, the economy expanded by 6.5% in 2025, its strongest result in more than a decade. Construction grew 15.9%, transport and warehousing 20.4%, manufacturing 6.4% and trade 8.9%. The World Bank attributes the acceleration to strong domestic demand and a one-off rise in oil output, which increased 13.5% as the expanded Tengiz field ramped up. The IMF's 2025 Article IV mission was blunter. It described overheating pressures and a loose fiscal stance financed by large transfers from the National Fund, with a non-oil deficit above 8% of GDP and strong demand that included activity by state-owned enterprises.

Only part of this will persist. The oil increase was a change in level rather than a new growth rate, and 2026 has shown how exposed that level is. Planned transfers from the National Fund were cut by almost half for 2026, although the government's budget plan for 2027 to 2029 raises withdrawals again to KZT 4.4 trillion in 2027. The non-oil engines are more durable because they are tied to multi-year construction, logistics and industrial programmes.

Commercial reading. Demand assumptions should be anchored to the non-oil economy rather than to headline GDP. In January to July 2026 the difference was material, with overall growth of 4.1% against an estimated 5.4% for non-mining activity.

2. Imports grew by almost 60%, but not all of it was domestic demand

Imports of goods rose from $41.1 billion in 2021 to $64.8 billion in 2025. Two neighbours dominate supply. In 2025 Russia supplied 29.7% of imports and China 29.2%, with Germany a distant third at 4.8%. Passenger cars, pharmaceuticals, telephones and vehicle components headed the list of imported goods.

Three effects overlapped. The first was trade rerouting after 2022. Estimates by Oxford Economics, cited by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, put the 2022 increase in Kazakhstan's exports to Russia at around 30%, fuelled by higher imports from the EU. The second was price inflation, which exceeded 20% in 2022. The third, in 2025, was stimulus-driven consumption. Analysis of the 2025 trade data links import growth in vehicles, electronics and pharmaceuticals to strong domestic demand supported by budgetary and quasi-fiscal stimulus, which helped narrow the trade surplus from 7.3% to 4.6% of GDP.

The transit component has already shrunk under secondary-sanctions pressure. Customs data analysed by the independent outlet The Bell showed Russia's imports of machinery and equipment from Kazakhstan falling by more than half year on year in early 2024. The government's August 2026 forecast still has goods imports rising to $80.5 billion in 2027 and $88.4 billion in 2029, but their composition is likely to keep moving towards goods that domestic industry cannot yet make.

Commercial reading. Headline import values overstate the domestic market a new supplier can serve, particularly in electronics, machinery and components, where transit flows were concentrated. They also understate the incumbency of Russian and Chinese suppliers, who between them account for close to three of every five dollars of imports.

3. Foreign investment recovered in headline terms but not in net terms

Gross FDI inflows reached $28 billion in 2022, the high point of the period, declined to about $18 billion in 2024 and recovered to $20.5 billion in 2025. A Halyk Finance analysis of National Bank data, republished in Russian by Kapital.kz, shows however that net FDI was negative in 2025. The outflow of $0.9 billion was the first since 2005. The oil and gas sector alone recorded a net outflow of $6.3 billion as major projects, including the Tengiz expansion, moved from construction into profit repatriation. Elsewhere the picture was positive. Manufacturing attracted a net $1.7 billion, nearly half of it into metallurgy, while trade, finance and communications together drew about $3.4 billion.

The oil-sector outflow is a lifecycle effect that will last while large projects remain in payout. The more telling signals are the inflow into sectors that serve domestic demand and the forward pipeline. The same publication cites UNCTAD data showing that Kazakhstan attracted $15.7 billion, or 63%, of greenfield project investment in North and Central Asia in 2024. Domestic investment filled part of the gap in the meantime, with fixed capital investment rising 13% in 2025, mainly on the back of state financing.

Commercial reading. Foreign capital is repositioning from extracting resources towards serving the domestic market. For a company assessing demand, that implies more foreign-owned competitors in consumer and B2B segments than aggregate FDI figures suggest, and an investment cycle in which the state, rather than foreign investors, is the dominant buyer.

4. Localisation moved from policy rhetoric into procurement mechanics

In 2024 companies in the Samruk-Kazyna group signed contracts worth KZT 1.1 trillion with domestic producers. In 2025 the figure almost doubled to KZT 2.17 trillion, roughly $4 billion, and in the first half of 2026 it rose by a further 46% year on year. Offtake contracts, which are long-term purchase commitments designed to underwrite new local production, reached KZT 257.5 billion in 2025. A digital Register of Kazakh Producers has operated since November 2025, lists more than 10,000 companies and is integrated with both the public procurement portal and Samruk-Kazyna's procurement system.

Procurement is the main lever of an import-substitution strategy that now organises industrial policy. Domestic suppliers to the fund can receive advances of up to 30%, are exempt from collateral requirements and are paid faster. In oil and gas, where a Kazakh producer exists, purchases are run among domestic suppliers, with minimum in-country value set at 50% for works and services and 80% for design. The channel is large, because the fund's group includes the national oil and gas, railway and power grid companies.

Of all the trends in the data, this is the most clearly structural. It is embedded in law, in digital registers, in local-content programmes with management targets at the largest oil operators, and in a pipeline of 15 further oil and gas equipment plants due to be localised by 2027.

Commercial reading. For B2B and B2G suppliers the question is no longer only whether demand exists, but whether a domestic substitute is on the Register. Where one is, an importer's accessible market contracts sharply. Where none is, the same policy can create demand for technology partners, components and equipment for new production lines.

5. Households saw nominal growth and a real squeeze

Retail trade grew 7.5% in real terms in 2025, yet official statistics show real household incomes fell by 1.1% as inflation reached 12.3%. Average per capita income was around KZT 238,000 a month. The World Bank notes that retail growth was sustained largely by household borrowing. Tighter macroprudential rules and a policy rate that reached 18% in October 2025 then slowed unsecured lending, the VAT increase weighed on spending, and retail growth eased to 4.1% in January to July 2026.

The squeeze should ease as disinflation continues. Inflation fell to 9.8% in August 2026 after eleven consecutive months of slowing, and the National Bank expects it to approach its 5% target in 2028. Credit-led consumption, however, is unlikely to return with the intensity of 2024 and 2025.

Commercial reading. Consumer demand is real but price-sensitive and polarised. Premium positioning addresses a narrow urban segment, while mass-market positioning competes with Chinese and Russian supply and with local producers supported by policy.

6. Channels consolidated and grey trade was squeezed

Online retail reached KZT 3.77 trillion in 2025, or 14.3% of retail trade, and 86% of it passed through marketplaces. Industry estimates cited in 2025 put Kaspi's share above 70%, with Wildberries at 17.2%. In passenger cars, more than 60% of vehicles were brought in through grey import schemes at the 2023 peak. Since then higher registration costs, recycling fees, stricter technical requirements and the removal of VAT exemptions have made many unofficial imports uneconomic, shifting share towards official distributors and Chinese brands.

These changes reflect digital adoption, bank-led super-apps and a deliberate policy of formalising trade, reinforced by the new Tax Code, which raised VAT from 12% to 16% in January 2026 and halved the VAT registration threshold. Both concentration and formalisation are structural.

Commercial reading. Formalisation helps compliant foreign suppliers by removing untaxed competitors from the price comparison. Concentration cuts the other way. In many consumer categories, reaching the national market now means accepting the commercial terms of one or two gatekeepers.

Which Trends Are Structural and Which Are Temporary

A market that grows through a sequence of shocks needs its trends sorted before any of them is extrapolated. The classification below reflects our reading of the evidence from 2021 to 2026.

The pattern is consistent. The trends that inflate headline demand are mostly cyclical or temporary, while the trends that determine who is allowed and able to serve that demand are mostly structural. That asymmetry is the main reason headline growth overstates the opportunity for new foreign entrants.

Where the Kazakhstan Market Stands in 2026

The 2026 picture is of a two-speed economy. Growth held at 4.1% in the first half even though oil output fell 8.4%, because the non-oil economy grew by more than 5%. Manufacturing expanded 9.8%, construction 15.2% and fixed investment 9.6%. Several of the fastest-growing manufacturing categories are ones that policy has targeted for localisation, with pharmaceutical output up 43.6%, vehicle production up 31.6% and chemicals up 20.7%.

The oil sector's difficulties show how exposed the macroeconomic framework remains to a single export route. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium carries more than 80% of Kazakhstan's oil exports to a Black Sea terminal that has been struck repeatedly since late 2025. In July, attacks on tankers halted loadings and cut output at Tengiz, the largest field, by more than half. At the same time the conflict in the Middle East, which the IMF placed at the centre of its April 2026 World Economic Outlook, pushed Brent above $100 a barrel in July. Non-resident portfolio inflows, attracted by high real returns and an S&P rating upgrade to BBB in August, helped strengthen the tenge from 501 to 462 per dollar between January and the end of August, alongside higher oil prices.

Monetary conditions are easing but remain tight. The National Bank cut its base rate to 16.25% on 4 September as inflation slipped below 10%, while keeping its 2026 growth forecast at 4.5% to 5.5%.

Three features of this position bear directly on commercial feasibility in Kazakhstan. First, working capital is expensive. With a policy rate above 16%, financing inventory and receivables costs far more than in the eurozone, which lengthens payment-term negotiations and favours suppliers able to carry stock. Domestic producers, by contrast, can draw on state programmes such as Orleu, where the rate for the final borrower is capped at 12.6%, and on advances of up to 30% from Samruk-Kazyna, an asymmetry that can show up directly in tender prices. Second, revenues measured in dollars look better in 2026 than underlying volumes justify, because a tenge that has appreciated by around 8% since January inflates any market expressed in dollars. Third, the VAT increase has raised consumer prices but has also narrowed the price advantage of small local suppliers that previously operated below the VAT registration threshold.

How Market Sizing for a Foreign Company in Kazakhstan Moves From Total to Winnable Demand

The central distinction in any market opportunity assessment in Kazakhstan is between four layers of demand. Total demand is what statistics describe, whether as domestic production plus imports minus exports or as the aggregate spending of a customer group. Addressable demand is the part that a company's products, specifications and price points actually serve. Accessible demand is the part not already closed by procurement rules, local-content requirements, long-term contracts or channel control. Winnable demand is the share a new entrant can realistically take, at an acceptable price, against local producers, Russian and Chinese suppliers and established foreign brands. In Kazakhstan the distance between the first and last layers can be wider than comparisons with other upper-middle-income markets would suggest, for reasons specific to the country.

Addressable demand is concentrated by geography and income

Kazakhstan has about 20.6 million people spread across the world's ninth-largest territory, and its purchasing power is far from evenly distributed. In 2025 Almaty city generated 22.7% of GDP, Astana 12.3% and the oil-producing Atyrau region 10.4%. The two main cities, home to roughly a fifth of the population, produced 35% of national output. Per capita output in Atyrau was more than nine times that of Turkistan region, which has over two million residents, but that gap reflects oil production far more than household spending. Output data therefore has to be translated into purchasing power before it is used for market sizing. A consumer brand is in practice assessing two or three urban markets, while an industrial supplier is often assessing a handful of regional clusters built around specific fields, plants and mines.

Accessible demand is filtered by procurement, localisation and gatekeepers

This is where Kazakhstan diverges most from its headline numbers. A large share of B2B and B2G demand flows through a small number of buyers operating under explicit domestic-preference rules. Beyond Samruk-Kazyna's KZT 2.17 trillion of contracts with domestic producers in 2025, public procurement contracts with Kazakh producers reached KZT 456 billion, and subsoil users operate under in-country value floors. Three sectors show how the filter works in practice.

In energy and utilities, the national modernisation project envisages about KZT 13 trillion, roughly $27 billion, of investment between 2025 and 2029, including 7.3 GW of new generating capacity and some 84,000 km of networks. It is one of the largest identifiable demand pools in Central Asia. Its procurement rules, however, give priority to Kazakh manufacturers, and according to the industry minister only companies on the register of domestic producers may take part in the project's tenders. Around 500 domestic manufacturers have registered as potential suppliers, and officials expect demand for locally produced equipment and materials to reach about KZT 2 trillion by 2029. In our assessment, the share accessible to foreign suppliers therefore narrows to technology the local base cannot produce and to the part of the programme financed by international financial institutions. The government has secured KZT 625 billion from six such institutions for projects scheduled in 2026, and lenders of this kind generally apply their own procurement rules to the projects they fund.

In pharmaceuticals, about half of the market passes through public procurement, and the single distributor SK-Pharmacia buys for the state-guaranteed healthcare system under long-term contracts with domestic manufacturers. According to PharmMedIndustry of Kazakhstan, an association of local producers, domestic companies hold only about 15% of the market by value but close to 30% by volume, because most local output sits in low-cost segments while imports dominate higher-priced categories. The target of a 50% domestic share by 2029 indicates the direction of travel.

In passenger vehicles, record sales of more than 207,000 new cars in the first eleven months of 2025, according to the Kazakhstan Automobile Union, sat alongside a policy architecture that increasingly rewards local assembly. Plants commissioned in 2024 and 2025 added annual capacity of 190,000 vehicles, localisation at some brands has reached 40%, independent importers have been pushed to the margins, and Chinese brands held more than 40% of the market by March 2026.

Consumer channels add a final filter. With marketplaces handling most online retail and the government having announced that 30% of retail shelf space should be reserved for Kazakhstan-made goods, a foreign consumer brand's accessible market is defined as much by gatekeepers' terms as by consumer preferences.

Winnable demand depends on competitive intensity and pricing conditions

Competition in Kazakhstan comes from three directions at once. Domestic producers increasingly compete with subsidised finance, procurement priority and advance payments behind them. Russian suppliers benefit from customs-union membership, common technical regulations and long-standing distribution relationships. Chinese suppliers compete on price and, as the car market shows, increasingly through local assembly partnerships. European, American, Korean and Japanese suppliers typically win on technology, quality and lifecycle cost, which means winnable demand concentrates where buyers are able and willing to pay for those attributes.

Pricing conditions reinforce the point. State and quasi-state tenders are typically price-led, with domestic preferences applied on top. Real household incomes fell in 2025, and the World Bank's outlook for resilient consumption rests partly on a recovery in real wages. Double-digit interest rates also erode the margin of any supplier that has to extend credit to distributors or customers.

How to Read Incomplete and Fragmented Market Data in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan's official statistics are extensive and timely by regional standards. For market analysis in Kazakhstan, the risk lies less in the absence of data than in the ease with which accurate figures lead to the wrong commercial conclusion. Six patterns recur.

Gross and net investment tell different stories

Official communication emphasises gross FDI inflows. The Halyk Finance analysis cited above draws on a National Bank study that treats net inflows excluding reinvested earnings as the better measure of genuinely new capital. On that measure, Kazakhstan received almost no fresh foreign capital in the seven years before 2025, and 2025 brought the first net inflow in that period even though total net FDI turned negative. The three measures can therefore point in different directions in the same year.

Trade data mixes consumption with transit

Import statistics for 2022 and 2023 captured goods that were subsequently re-exported. Trade with other members of the Eurasian Economic Union is compiled from statistical reporting rather than customs declarations, because there are no internal customs borders, and mirror data from partner countries often diverges. Category-level import growth should be tested against evidence of end use before it is treated as market size.

Currency effects can masquerade as growth

The tenge averaged about 426 per dollar in 2021, ended 2024 at 525 and strengthened to about 462 by the end of August 2026. A market measured in dollars can therefore change by 10% to 20% with no change in underlying volumes. Local-currency and volume series are the sounder basis for identifying trends.

About a sixth of the economy is not directly observed

The Bureau of National Statistics estimates the non-observed economy at 16.7% of GDP in 2024, down from 20.2% in 2020, and its earlier estimates put the largest shares in trade, construction and transport. Official sales data in these sectors understate real activity, while grey imports, until recently the dominant channel for cars, distort both import and retail series.

Targets are not forecasts

The National Development Plan set a growth target of 6.2% for 2026, while the outcome for January to July was 4.1%. Sector programmes publish targets for local shares, infrastructure wear and output that are valuable statements of policy intent but unreliable as demand forecasts.

Procurement records are underused evidence

For state and quasi-state demand, the most reliable evidence is often not survey-based market research in Kazakhstan but awarded contracts. The public procurement portal and Samruk-Kazyna's procurement system record what was bought, from whom, at what price and under which preference rules, and they increasingly show which items already have domestic suppliers on the Register.

Outlook to 2030 Across Official Targets, Institutional Forecasts and Our Interpretation

A credible forward view keeps three layers separate, namely what the government has committed to, what independent institutions expect, and what follows from the gap between the two.

Official targets

The National Development Plan to 2029, approved in July 2024, sets a headline target of $450 billion in nominal GDP by 2029, up from $264 billion in 2023, together with GDP per capita of about $21,000 and real growth reaching 6.7% a year by 2029. Sector commitments point in the same direction. By 2029 the Ministry of Trade aims to lift online retail to 18.5% of retail trade, the energy and utilities programme aims to cut infrastructure wear to 40% and domestic producers are to supply half of the pharmaceutical market, while the National Bank aims to bring inflation close to 5% in 2028.

Institutional and government forecasts

The IMF also projects GDP per capita rising from about $17,500 in 2026 to $23,170 in 2031.

Our interpretation

What follows is Tretiakov Consulting's analytical view rather than an official or institutional forecast.

First, the real economy is more likely to grow at around 4% a year through 2030 than at the pace set out in official plans. The Development Plan targets 6.2% for 2026, rising to 6.7% by 2029, and the government's own August 2026 forecast expects 5.3% to 5.5% a year in 2027 to 2029. Projections from the IMF, the World Bank, the ADB, S&P and the National Bank sit between roughly 3.5% and 5% for the medium term, and 2026 has already shown how quickly export disruption and tight policy can open a two-point gap between plan and outcome. Demand cases are better built on this consensus, with official trajectories treated as upside.

Second, the dollar target may nevertheless be approached, because nominal GDP in dollars also reflects inflation and the exchange rate. By our calculation, the IMF's per capita path implies an economy of roughly half a trillion dollars by 2031. For boards the distinction matters. A market that grows quickly in nominal dollars while real incomes rise slowly will look considerably more attractive in a financial model than in actual sales volumes.

Third, the composition of accessible demand will change more than its size. The government expects goods imports to rise from $80.5 billion in 2027 to $88.4 billion in 2029, so aggregate import demand keeps growing. Through 2029, however, the strongest and most visible demand will come from state-backed programmes in energy and utilities, transport and housing, and from the large oil and gas operators bound by local-content programmes, which are precisely the areas where domestic preference is strongest. Each year of successful localisation converts part of today's import demand into tomorrow's domestic supply. For foreign technology and equipment suppliers the window is real, but it is time-limited.

Reliable forecasts rarely exist at the level of individual sectors and product categories. There, the more useful exercise is to track the factors that will determine how the market develops.

What the Evidence Means for Commercial Feasibility in Kazakhstan

The evidence does not support a single verdict on Kazakhstan. It supports a sharper question. The opportunity is likely to be strongest where four conditions coincide. Demand is funded by multi-year programmes or by urban households with recovering real incomes. No domestic producer of a substitute is registered or credibly planned. Buyers' selection criteria reward technology, quality or lifecycle cost rather than lowest price alone. And the business can operate within the payment terms and financing costs the market imposes.

The evidence is weaker where the opposite holds. That includes products already on the Register of Kazakh Producers or covered by offtake contracts. It includes hospital pharmaceuticals and other categories bought through a single state channel under long-term local contracts. It also includes construction materials and simple fabricated products that are early targets of import substitution, as well as consumer categories whose historical volumes depended on grey imports or cheap credit.

Localisation cuts both ways. The policy that closes some import channels also creates demand for production equipment, components, materials, engineering services and technology partners for the plants now being built. The expansion of vehicle assembly, pharmaceutical production and oil and gas equipment manufacturing in 2025 and 2026 is, from a supplier's perspective, a new customer base. Where an assessment points towards producing locally rather than supplying from abroad, the questions shift from market opportunity to industrial investment, including capacity, capital expenditure, incentives and execution risk. That stage is covered by our industrial investment and capital projects advisory.

Kazakhstan's position as the largest economy in Central Asia and a member of the Eurasian Economic Union also means that, for some products, the relevant market is regional rather than national. That can enlarge addressable demand, but it also brings a wider set of competitors already serving the customs union.

If the assessment is positive, two decisions follow and are best taken in order. The first is whether the opportunity justifies the capital and risk it would require. The second is how to enter, which our article on how foreign mid-market companies should enter Kazakhstan examines. Tretiakov Consulting supports companies through both stages with its market entry and business expansion advisory.

A Note for Boards

Kazakhstan passes the first test of a market assessment more convincingly than most markets in its region, because demand is substantial, growing and increasingly formal. It is less forgiving on the second test. The share of that demand open to a new foreign entrant is shaped by a small number of cities, a small number of large buyers, a deliberate localisation policy and channel structures that reward scale. Companies that size the opportunity from headline data tend to overestimate it, while those that start from accessible and winnable demand tend to find a smaller but more defensible one.

The practical implication is to require any market assessment in Kazakhstan to show its working from total to winnable demand before capital or entry structure is discussed. Tretiakov Consulting's Kazakhstan advisory practice supports international companies in making that assessment.

Tretiakov Consulting advises boards, owners and foreign investors on market entry, investment decisions, governance and operating model design across European and CIS markets, including Kazakhstan.