Клара Сейдахметова
The main sectors of the economy continue to grow compared to last year, but there is a slowdown in the largest ones – industry and trade in comparison with previous months.
In industry, mining which is the key sector harms the growth rate. This is due to the shutdown of oil production upon unscheduled repairs at Kashagan and planned ones at Tengiz, as well as due to constant interruptions in the operation of the largest pipeline of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), through which most of the extracted oil is exported. However, if earlier the extraction of metal ores could partially offset the problems of the oil and gas sector, now certain problems are present here.
So, according to the latest data, ore mining is slowing down. Such stagnation, in our opinion, is associated with a significant decline in the supply of ferrous metals, iron ores and concentrates from Kazakhstan to Russia. Mining of iron ores fell by 15.5%.
The observed weakening of domestic trade growth from 6.2% to 5.2% is due to rising food prices (+20.8% YoY in August) and worsening inflation expectations. All this leads to the fact that people give much more money for products, respectively, their consumption begins to decrease.
Therefore, although food sales are growing in monetary terms, they are declining in physical volumes.
At the same time, in wholesale trade, on the contrary, there is an increase in sales of food products, which may indicate a reorientation of the trade market to the wholesale segment.
Read more in the paper
Monthly inflation overview: causes, elements, forecasts