Over 14,000 ethnic Kazakhs return home since beginning of year
A total of 14,828 ethnic Kazakhs have returned to their historical homeland and obtained the status of Kandas since the beginning of 2025. Since 1991, Kazakhstan has welcomed back 1,162,900 people, Qazinform News Agency reports citing the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection.
This year, 44.5% of kandas who arrived in Kazakhstan came from Uzbekistan, 43.6% are from China, 4.1% are from Turkmenistan, 3% are from Mongolia, 2.5% are from Russia, and 2.3% are from other countries.
As of December 1, 2025, 57.4% of ethnic returnees are of working age, 34% are minors, and 8.6% are pensioners. Among kandas of working age, 15% have higher education, 27.6% have secondary specialized education, 51.1% have general secondary education, and 6.3% have no education certificates.
Ethnic Kazakhs have settled throughout the country. At the same time, several labor-deficient areas, including Akmola, Abai, Kostanay, Pavlodar, Atyrau, West, East and North Kazakhstan regions.
The kandas resettlement quota for 2025 stands at 2,309 people. As of December 1, 2025, a total of 2,218 kandas have been relocated to these designated regions.
Kandas settling in the listed regions are provided with state support measures, including a one-time relocation subsidy of 70 MCI (275,200 tenge) per family head and each family member, as well as monthly subsidies for housing rent and utility payments for up to one year, ranging from 15 to 30 MCI (59,000 to 118,000 tenge).
Since the beginning of the year, various support measures have been provided to 1,279 kandas, including permanent employment for 356 individuals.
In addition, to enhance the effectiveness of voluntary resettlement, institutional measures have been introduced to support employers involved in relocating citizens to northern regions. These include the introduction of an economic mobility certificate, which can be used for purchasing or constructing housing, or to cover part of the down payment on a mortgage loan. The certificate is provided as a one-time, non-repayable grant amounting to up to 50% of the housing cost, or up to 4.56 million tenge per family.
Earlier Qazinform News Agency reported, over 11,000 ethnic Kazakhs have returned to the historical homeland since the beginning of 2025.
