“Foreign objects” hit and damaged the fuselage of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed outside Aktau on December 25, a report from Kazakhstan’s ministry of transport said. The damage occurred while the plane was approaching Grozny (Russia), its final destination. Despite an attempt to make an emergency landing at the Aktau airport, the plane crashed, killing 38 passengers and members of the crew.
On February 7, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the state of the country’s economy is “not so dire as some describe it” and ordered the government to accelerate the discussion regarding the tax reform that envisions, among other measures, an increase in value-added tax. The move is seen as controversial, given the potential negative effect it could have on small and medium businesses, although economy minister Serik Zhumagarin reassured that the reform would not hit retail stores, hairdressers, and restaurants. The government has yet to propose a new VAT rate to Parliament.
Zhumagarin said on February 6 that the tax reform and the increase of VAT would increase the government’s spending by about 800 billion tenge in order to index pensions, benefits, and public sector salaries. Days earlier, Zhumagarin had said the government would earn between 5 to 7.5 trillion tenge ($9.7-15.5 billion).
Kazakhstan’s annual inflation resumed to grow in January, despite the Central Bank keeping interest rates high for years, the Statistics Committee reported on February, 3. Annual inflation in the country reached 8.9% in January 2025, up from 8.6% in December 2024. [Read more here.]
The Senate approved amendments to the Budget Law on February 6, that would make rules on National Fund assets more stringent. Should the amendments be signed into law, National Fund assets could not be used for investing in the local financial instruments or to finance budget expenditures. The National Fund has repeatedly been used to plug holes in the budget in recent years.
On February 3, New York-based Human Rights Watch called on the authorities in Kazakhstan to drop charges against the author of a satirical social media channel who is currently in pre-trial detention. Temirlan Yensebek was arrested on January 17 and charged with “inciting interethnic discord” which is punishable with up to seven years in prison.
A military court in Almaty sentenced on February 7 an army officer to seven years in prison for the killing of Yerlan Zhagiparov and Auez Kapsalanov during ‘Qandy Qantar’ in January 2022. The trial was held behind closed doors, which drove criticism from the victims’ side. The repression of urban protests in January 2022 resulted in at least 238 killed.
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