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Kazakhstan Economy 1996
Kazakhstan, the second largest of the former Soviet states in territory,
possesses enormous untapped fossil-fuel reserves as well as plentiful
supplies of other minerals and metals. It also has considerable agricultural
potential with its vast steppe lands accommodating both livestock and grain
production. Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and
processing of these natural resources and also on a relatively large machine
building sector specializing in construction equipment, tractors,
agricultural machinery, and some defense items. The breakup of the USSR and
the collapse of demand for Kazakhstan's traditional heavy industry products
have resulted in a sharp contraction of the economy since 1991, with the
steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. The government has pursued a
moderate program of economic reform and privatization which is gradually
lifting state controls over economic activity and shifting assets into the
private sector. Nevertheless, government control over key sectors of the
economy remains strong. Sustained economic hardships and continued pressures
from industrial elites will make it difficult for the government to sustain
its policies of monetary and fiscal discipline which had brought down
inflation by the end of 1994. Continued lack of pipeline transportation for
expanded oil exports has closed off a likely source of economic recovery.
GDP - purchasing power parity - $55.2 billion (1994 estimate as extrapolated
from World Bank estimate for 1992)
-
National product real growth rate:
-
National product per capita:
-
Inflation rate (consumer prices):
24% per month (1994 est.)
1.1% includes only officially registered unemployed; also large numbers of
underemployed workers (1994)
$NA, including capital expenditures of $NA
oil, ferrous and nonferrous metals, chemicals, grain, wool, meat, coal
Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan
machinery and parts, industrial materials, oil and gas
Russia and other former Soviet republics, China
less than $1 billion debt to Russia
accounts for 26% of net national product; extractive industries (oil, coal,
iron ore, manganese, chromite, lead, zinc, copper, titanium, bauxite, gold,
silver, phosphates, sulfur), iron and steel, nonferrous metal, tractors and
other agricultural machinery, electric motors, construction materials
accounts for 20% of GDP; employs about 26% of the labor force; grain, mostly
spring wheat; meat, cotton, wool
illicit cultivation of cannabis and opium poppy; mostly for CIS consumption;
limited government eradication program; used as transshipment point for
illicit drugs to Western Europe and North America from Southwest Asia
approximately $1 billion in foreign loans and credits allocated in 1994;
disbursements projected at $700 billion through 1995
national currency the tenge introduced on 15 November 1993
tenges per US$1 - 54 (yearend 1994)
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