For the nine months of 2019, Kazakhstan people sent to abroad 540.4 billion tenge, which is 8% more than for the same period in 2018.
The current state of the world economy is characterized by a sharp slowdown in growth rates almost to the level of the period of the global financial crisis. As a result, there are significant differences in the economic development of countries, an increase in unemployment, a decrease in socio-economic indicators, which in turn deepened the process of migration to countries with more favorable living conditions.
Over the past ten years, an average of 25 thousand foreigners immigrated to Kazakhstan, and 32 thousand Kazakhstan people emigrated from the country. Obviously, an increase in migration contributes to the development of the money transfer market, whose role in shaping the country’s economic policy is regularly increasing.
In Kazakhstan, the money transfer market is represented by such international systems as Zolotaya Korona, Western Union, Unistream, Contact, Faster, MoneyGram, BLIZKO, etc. Through these systems, in October 2019, Kazakhstan people made 244.2 thousand transactions to abroad in the amount of 66, 6 billion tenge. That is, the average check of one transfer amounted to 272.8 thousand tenge. Compared to September of the same year, the volume of transfers increased by 1.7%, and the average check – by 10.4%.
Since the beginning of the year, the volume of transfers grew immediately by 75.8%. At the same time, Kazakhstan people began to send money to Uzbekistan and Georgia more often (a 3-fold increase), to Tajikistan (a 2.5-fold increase), to Turkey and Kyrgyzstan (a 2-fold increase). Nevertheless, despite the significant growth in the dynamics of transfers to Georgia and Tajikistan, they form only 5% of the total. 80% of remittances were sent to Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkey and Kyrgyzstan.
Kazakhstan people received 29.4 billion tenge from abroad, which is 4% more than in September. Traditionally, the bulk of the funds came from Russia – over the past five years, the country has formed at least a third of the volume of remittances. In total, about 80% of the total funds came from Russia, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and the United States.
Since the beginning of the year, a sharp increase in the volume of transfers has been observed from Turkey (an increase of 61.3%), Kyrgyzstan (51.2%), the United States (45%) and Ukraine (40%).
However, the total increase was only 2.6%, as the amount of cash from Russia fell immediately by 19.7%.
In total, for the nine months of 2019, Kazakhstan people sent to abroad 540.4 billion tenge, which is 8% more than for the same period in 2018. The volume of money transfers from abroad to Kazakhstan, on the contrary, decreased by 1% and amounted to 290.2 billion tenge.
It should be noted that Kazakhstan people more send money to abroad than receive from there. This situation is characterized as an outflow of funds from the country, which affects the growth of GDP and the weakening of the tenge.