Kazakhstan's Food Production Sees 10% Growth in H1

Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Economy led a meeting today at the Headquarters for Economic Growth, highlighting significant progress in the food and beverage production sector.

The meeting highlighted food and beverage production accounts for 17.2% of the country’s manufacturing sector, behind only metallurgy and machine building, The Caspian Post reports, citing Kazakh media.

In the first half of this year, Kazakhstan’s food production totaled 1.8 trillion tenge, marking a 10% growth year-on-year and 5.3% higher than planned, fueled by state subsidies, 70% of the VAT cut, and so on.

The country saw production of butter surge 10.4%, sausage products - 10.8%, vegetable oil - 20.3% and fish products - 34.4% year-on-year.

Cereal production was down due to the seasonal factor. Several regions reported decline in production of confectionery, canned food, cheese and cottage cheese, which, according to Deputy Agriculture Minister Azat Sultanov, is largely attributable to disruptions in raw material supplies and restrictions in sales markets.

Beverage output amounted to 556.7 billion tenge, rising by 5% in volume and surpassing the plan by 3.7%. Kazakhstan experienced decline in alcoholic beverage production, while a 9.8% rise in non-alcoholic beverage output.

I instruct the Trade and Integration Ministry to sort out the situation on sales markets in regions and redistribute supplies between other regions, if necessary. The Agriculture Ministry is tasked to finalize the roadmap for food production taking into account the contribution of each major enterprise. Baiterek and Agrarian Credit Corporation should step up work on investment requests in the field of food production, stated Zhumangarin.