Kazakh Prime Minister Reports Half-Year Socioeconomic Development Results
Image Credit: primeminister.kz
Social payments were indexed twice this year with the measure affecting 4.1 million people, including 2.2 million pensioners, Kazakh Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov told the July 14 expanded government meeting with Kazakh President Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev.
Smailov also said that a step-by-step wage increase will soon affect 1.2 million civil servants.
“In education and the social sphere, the wages rose to 25 percent, in healthcare – from 20 percent to 30 percent. Wages increase also affected 1.5 million employees in the private and quasi-public sectors,” said Smailov.
The Kazakh Prime Minister announced new measures which will affect micro and small businesses. According to Smailov, a single payment from the wage fund for micro and small businesses will be introduced at the beginning of next year.
“This will reduce their current tax burden from the Wage Fund from 35 percent to 20 percent,” he said.
Smailov noted that the government is revising all regulatory legal acts to effectively reduce irrelevant regulatory requirements for businesses. This reform, according to him will significantly reduce the burden on businesses by an average of 30 percent and create an easier regulatory environment.
As for the optimization of expenditures of the national budget, Smailov noted that following the new budget policy, the parameters of the three-year budget and the National Fund will be determined by taking into account countercyclical rules. The national budget’s own revenues will grow by 40 percent this year.
“Over the past three years, the government reached a significant optimization of the national budget expenditures by 4.2 trillion tenge (US$8.78billion). This work to optimize and improve the efficiency of spending will continue,” the Kazakh Prime Minister concluded.
