ED – this is bne IntelliNews's annual KAZAKHSTAN OUTLOOK 2026 for the upcoming year. We are making forward-looking assessments for major Global Emerging Markets in Emerging Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, drawing on insightful reporting from our bureaus around the world.

What is on the agenda? What are the prospects for economic growth and what problems lie in store in the coming year? A detailed report that covers, business, economics, finance, energy, politics and the major sectors of the most important markets.

The trajectory of inflation in Kazakhstan reversed in 2025 after the country managed to stabilise it below double digits in 2024. Fed by excess demand, seen by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a sign of an overheating economy, inflation was hovering around 13% near the end of 2025. This caused Kazakhstan’s central bank to adopt its highest ever policy rate of 18% in October with no scope for a rate reduction in the near term and the possibility of further tightening in 2026.

Double digit inflation pushes up public discontent with the authorities. At the same time, the authorities appear to be tightening their noose on freedom of speech.

New laws are under consideration, including one on “LGBT propaganda”, in what seems to be a delusional attempt to appeal to the country’s traditionalist majority amid ongoing economic dissatisfaction. The government has simultaneously banned face-covering in public, a move which effectively bans the wearing of niqabs in the Muslim-majority country. Such attempts to juggle and balance reactions of the public to one authoritarian measure with responses to another authoritarian solution are unlikely to bear any fruit, as the public is only likely to grow even more antagonised by the escalation of restrictions on freedoms amid widespread economic anxieties.  

Though Kazakhstan has continued to develop its capacities to function as a transit zone for trade between China and Europe that bypasses the territory of Russia, the ex-Soviet state has grown bolder in its engagement with Russia as US President Donald Trump’s administration has created an environment where Kazakhstan no longer needs to demonstrate political distance from its northern neighbour in fear of sanctions. 

Kazakhstan has officially picked Russia’s Rosatom to build the country’s first nuclear power plant – a move that Kazakhstan hopes will help the country cut emissions and accelerate the switch from coal-reliance towards green energy (China, meanwhile, has been chosen to build two more nuclear power plants, offering a diversification of delivery risk in the nuclear programme).

Central Asia’s largest, and oil-rich, economy continues to struggle to diversify oil exports away from reliance on the Russia-territory-dependent CPC pipeline, something which became a growing concern in 2025 amid drone strikes conducted by Ukraine on the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. At the end of the year, repairs were still required to bring one of CPC’s three single mooring points at the port back into action. Drone-strike damage caused to the equipment was still impacting Kazakh oil exports and production.

The government plans to reduce its reliance on the “rainy day” National Fund in 2026 by increasing reliance on its own revenues. Ministers anticipate that coverage of the republican budget with “own revenues” is set to grow from 63.7% in 2025 to 83.5% in 2028.

Read the full OUTLOOK Kazakhstan 2026 report here.