Leading indicator of economy (2 months of 2023)

According to the results of 2 months of 2023, the growth of the short-term economic indicator slowed down and amounted to 4.0%

A slight cooling occurred due to a slowdown in the growth of the service sector from 7.6% to 5.0%. And the goods production sector, on the contrary, grew from 2.3% to 2.7%.

The main sectors of the economy continued to develop in positive dynamics, while a slight decrease in growth rates was noted in the communication, wholesale and retail trade, transportation and warehousing, as well as in the mining sector.

The construction has shown the greatest growth of 12.8%. Construction of residential buildings in January-February decreased by 11.8%. At the same time, the construction of non-residential buildings increased by 35.4%, which blocked the negative impact of the housing part. The construction of structures increased by 5.3%. The growth is due to an increase in investments in fixed assets by 19.3% (last year +2.6%), the delivery of construction projects and continued state support.

The growth rate accelerated to 3.9% in the agricultural sector due to the increased production of the main types of livestock products by 4.1%.

A questionable matter was noted in the industrial sector, which grew by 1.6%. A slowdown in growth was observed in the mining industry from 1.2% to 0.5%. A decrease in comparison with last year is noted in the production of coal (-15%) and iron ores (-29.8%). The negative effect was offset by the extraction of non-ferrous metals (+7.6%) and other minerals (+12.9%). At the same time, crude oil and gas production remained at the level of last year, which, in our opinion, is due to the problems with the oil shipment to the CPC.

The growth of the Industrial Production Index was 2.5% in the manufacturing industry. The growth was thanks to the accelerated production of textiles (+54.1%), electrical equipment (+48.7%), light industry (+34.3), mechanical engineering (+31.5%) and beverages (+22.6%). The decrease occurred in metallurgical production (-11.3%) and tobacco production (-2.6%).

The cooling in the services sector was due to a slowdown in the growth rates of the main industries, which was expected after the “peak” values of January.

Thus, the growth in the communications market slowed from 18.1% to 12.0%, trade – from 19.4% to 11.5%, and transportation and warehousing industry – from 8.0% to 6.1%.

The communications industry is growing due to Internet services (+22.3%) and television (+16.5%), the development of which is supported by government programs and plans.

A decrease in growth rates was observed in retail and wholesale trade. At the same time, the main negative impact on retail continues to be food products, the decline of which has deepened to -5.5%, and this continues to happen due to a drop in real household incomes and a significant increase in prices. The wholesale segment demonstrates a more stable growth in sales of both food and non-food products.

In the transportation and warehousing industry, good rates were noted for passenger transportation (+19.0%) and passenger turnover (+33.8%). As a result, the revenues of enterprises from transportation amounted to 738.0 billion tenge.