In 6 months of 2016 Kazakhstan's GDP grows by 0.1% - K.Bishimbayev

"In the first half-year period GDP growth amounted 0.1% due to an increase in construction volume (by 6.6%), transport services (4.3%), agricultural production (by 2.7%) and manufacturing industry ( 0.5%)," K.Bishimbayev said.

In addition, there is a positive dynamics of growth rates of short-term economic indicators, covering six basic economy sectors (industry, agriculture, construction, trade, transport, communication). "In the first half-year period short-term economic indicators amounted to 99.3% against 99% in January-May of the current year," the Minister said.

According to the Ministry, for the first half-year period investments into capital assets increased by 8.5%. The highest investment growth is in agriculture by 48.6%, industry - by 12.8%, and real estate transactions - by 5.4%.

"Due to a decline of world oil and metal prices the export volume decreased by 31.8% and totaled 13.7 billion US dollars in January-May 2016. There is an import decline by 27.0% and amounts to 9.2 billion US dollars. As a result, the foreign trade turnover decreased by 29.9% to 23 billion US dollars.
Nevertheless, balance of foreign trade remains positive - 4.5 billion US dollars," K.Bishimbayev said.

"The international reserves of Kazakhstan as of July 1, 2016 comprised 96.2 billion U.S. dollars, has increased by 5.2% since January. Foreign currency assets of the National Fund rose by 3.5% and reached 65.7 billion US dollars. Gold and foreign currency reserves of the National Bank increased by 9.4% and made 30.5 billion US dollars," said the Minister at the Government's meeting today.

The Minister noted also stability in social sector and said that the average nominal wage in Kazakhstan rose by 9.9% and made 133,500 tenge. Inflation since the beginning of the year (June 2016 to December 2015) amounted to 4.6%," K.Bishimbayev said.

He also noted that there is a significant growth in housing construction under "Nurly Zhol" state program. For 6 months of 2016 the commissioning of residential buildings increased by 16.9% and reached 5,000,000 square meters, including 262 thousand square meters of housing were commissioned using the public funds. It is planned to put into service 309 thousand square meters of housing before the year-end. To eliminate emergency and three-shift education schools since the year-beginning there has been completed construction of 4 schools that started in 2015, and this year construction of 42 schools began. Before the year-end it is planned to put into service 34 new schools.

"To ensure the planned economic growth of 0.5% in the second half of this year the central and local public authorities need to ensure effective use of funds allocated for the implementation of anti-crisis measures, including those that allocated in the framework of the second package to stimulate economic growth and employment that was approved by the Government on June 21,2016," K.Bishimbayev concluded.