Kazakhstan's economy: the world's uranium, a coal-fired grid and an oil fund

What the ground under the steppe yields

Kazakhstan lives on what it digs and pumps. The World Bank names the non-renewable resources the economy depends on as oil, gas, uranium, coal and gold. The presidential office counts more than 5,000 mineral deposits. EITI, the transparency initiative for extractive industries, records that the extractive sector paid nearly 43% of all taxes. Oil and gas alone made up 14.1% of GDP in 2021.

Britannica maps the rest of the metals across the country: copper in the centre and in Aktobe province. Lead and zinc come from the Rudny Altai, tungsten and tin from the Kalba ridge, and chromite from the Mugalzhar hills. Gold is mined in the north and east, iron ore around Karaganda and Kostanay, and coal in the Karaganda and Ekibastuz basins among others. Steel comes from plants at Temirtau and Karaganda, and the non-ferrous smelters are concentrated in the east. EITI notes that the country holds more than 20 critical raw materials, among them tungsten, lithium and the rare earths, and that its partnership with the European Union and the United States on critical minerals has become a regular subject at international forums.

The newest find is one of those. Britannica reports that a deposit of rare-earth metals estimated at up to 20 million tons was discovered in Karaganda province in 2025, with extraction expected in the mid to late 2030s.

How oil came to carry the budget

Karachaganak, a gas and condensate field, began production in the late Soviet years, and by 1990 Moscow had negotiated an agreement with Chevron to develop the Tengiz field without consulting the republic's leaders until the talks were nearly done. Kazakhstan took control of its mineral resources in June 1991 and signed the Tengiz contract with Chevron in 1993. The Tengizchevroil venture was set up as a 40-year partnership, with Chevron holding 50%, ExxonMobil 25%, the state company KazMunayGas 20% and LukArco 5%. Kashagan, offshore in the northern Caspian, was developed in the early 21st century.

Production has grown as the fields expanded. Crude oil and gas condensate output reached 79.2 million tonnes in 2012, up from 51.2 million tonnes in 2003. In 2025 an expansion at Tengiz raised oil production by 13.5%, and the World Bank records mining as the main source of that year's growth. The country has three refineries, at Atyrau, Pavlodar and Shymkent, which cannot process all the crude, and much of it is exported to Russia.

Most oil revenue does not go straight into the budget. EITI describes how payments from oil and gas companies flow into the National Fund, except export customs duties, and the budget then receives an annual transfer from the fund set by law. Payments from mining companies go to the national and local budgets. The presidential office recorded that the National Fund held more than US$69 billion of foreign exchange reserves of about US$98 billion at the start of June 2015; the World Bank put gross reserves at US$65.4 billion at the end of 2025, enough to cover nine months of imports.

The dependence shows in the currency. The tenge was devalued by 19% in February 2014 and by another 22% in August 2015, after oil prices fell.

Why the uranium mines do not light the country

Kazakhstan has been the world's leading producer of uranium since 2009, according to the World Nuclear Association. Output rose from 2,114 tonnes of uranium in 2001 to 24,689 tonnes in 2016, dipped to 19,477 tonnes in 2020 and reached 25,839 tonnes in 2025, about 40% of the world's total that year. Britannica gives more than two fifths of global output by the early 2020s. Kazatomprom, the national atomic company set up in 1997, controls exploration and mining; of 13 mining projects, three are wholly its own and ten are joint ventures with foreign partners. A fuel fabrication plant opened in 2021 and reached its design capacity of 200 tonnes a year in 2024.

No reactor has generated electricity in Kazakhstan since 1999, when the only one, a Russian reactor that had run since 1972 producing power and desalinated water, shut down. Coal generated 58% of the country's electricity in 2023, gas 28%, hydro 8%, wind 3% and solar 2%, out of a total of 114 terawatt-hours.

That is set to change. In a referendum in October 2024 voters approved building a nuclear power plant; Freedom House gives the official result as 73% and the World Nuclear Association as 70%. Three intergovernmental agreements with Russia signed in May 2026 provide for two VVER-1200 reactors, with construction to start in 2027 and the first unit to run from 2034, at an estimated cost of US$14.4 billion. Britannica records that a second plant is to be built by a Chinese company.

What the steppe farms grow

Agriculture is a smaller share of output than its land suggests. More than 80% of the country's area is classed as agricultural land, almost 70% of it pasture. The presidential office records that nearly 70% of the arable land in the north is under grain and industrial crops: wheat and barley, and millet as well. Rice, cotton and tobacco are grown in the south, along with orchards, vineyards and melons, and wheat exports are a long-standing source of hard currency. Britannica puts farming at about a fifth of the labour force.

The grain belt is the land the Virgin Lands campaign of the 1950s ploughed, and the herding economy is the older one. Kazakhs raise sheep, goats and cattle, and meat, dairy, leather and wool are the main livestock products. Meatpacking plants are spread across the country, while creameries are concentrated in the north and east. The southern mountains also hold wild apple and walnut trees.

How the country trades across a continent

Kazakhstan has no sea port on an ocean, and it trades overland and across the Caspian. Britannica lists oil and natural gas as the main exports, with metals and chemicals after them, sent chiefly to Italy, China, Russia and the Netherlands. Imports include machinery, metal products and food, mostly from Russia and China. The country joined the World Trade Organization in 2015 and the Eurasian Economic Union, a customs union with Russia, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.

Railways carry most long-distance freight, on a network of 15,333 kilometres in 2012. Oil moves by pipeline as well: Britannica lists lines between Atyrau and Orsk, between Shymkent and Tashkent, and from the Uzen field through Zhetybai to Aktau.

Uranium usually leaves through the Russian port of St Petersburg. Kazatomprom has kept a second route across the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Georgia since 2018, and when the Canadian buyer Cameco put deliveries on hold early in 2022 until a route avoiding Russia was ready, its uranium went that way in September 2022. The World Bank describes the country as a crucial part of the Middle Corridor, the route linking Chinese and European markets through Central Asia and the South Caucasus. The Khorgos dry port on the Chinese border handles trains that run more than 9,000 kilometres between China and Europe, inside a special economic zone that opened in December 2016, and the port of Aktau on the Caspian absorbed the port of Kuryk in 2023.

What the factories and banks add

Manufacturing is concentrated in a few places. Steel comes from Temirtau and Karaganda, and pharmaceuticals from Shymkent. Sugar refineries sit in the south around Taldykorgan and Almaty, and light industry runs to canning, milling, brewing and wine. A Toyota assembly line opened in Kostanay in June 2014, and the car industry's reliance on imported parts and on state support through recycling fees has drawn public protest.

The banks went through a boom and a collapse. Lending grew fast in the mid-2000s, the sector fell into crisis in 2008, and BTA Bank and Alliance Bank defaulted soon after. Loans across the system fell from 59% of GDP in 2007 to 39% in 2011, and the National Bank introduced deposit insurance as part of the rescue. The government spent about US$21 billion on stimulus in 2009, some 20% of GDP, US$4 billion of it to stabilise the financial sector. Kazakhstan has been a member of the IMF since 15 July 1992.

What the latest figures show

The World Bank recorded growth of 5.0% in 2024 and 6.5% in 2025, driven by domestic demand and the one-off rise in oil output. Retail trade grew 7.5% in 2025, mostly on household borrowing. Manufacturing grew 6.4% and services 5.5%. Inflation accelerated to 12.3% in December 2025, and the National Bank raised its policy rate to 18% by the end of that year.

By the autumn of 2026 the pressure had eased a little. The Bureau of National Statistics gave annual consumer price inflation of 9.3% for September 2026, against the National Bank's target of 5%, and on 4 September 2026 the National Bank cut its base rate to 16.25%. Unemployment stood at 4.5% in the second quarter of 2026: 4.0% for men and 5.1% for women. The IMF projected growth of 4.6% and inflation of 10.7% for 2026.

The public finances are modest by the standards of the reserves. The World Bank put government debt at 24.8% of GDP in 2025 and the fiscal deficit at 3.2%, and it projects debt rising to 29.1% by 2028.

How the government says it will diversify

The government has set a target of doubling the size of the economy by 2030 from its 2023 level. The World Bank's assessment is that the transition to a market economy that began in the 1990s remains incomplete: state intervention is heavy, productivity is low and largely stagnant, and the dependence on extractive industries has held back diversification. Its partnership framework for 2026 to 2031 sets three aims: better infrastructure, stronger management of natural resources and a better environment for private firms.

The state's own holdings are large. A privatisation programme drawn up for 2016 to 2020 listed 675 state and quasi-state assets, including shares in 262 national companies inside holdings such as the Samruk-Kazyna sovereign wealth fund, the oil company KazMunayGas and the railway company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy. Kazatomprom sold 15% of its shares in November 2018 on the Astana International Exchange and the London Stock Exchange.

Poverty measured at the World Bank's US$8.30 a day line is projected to fall to 8.1% by 2027, though the Bank warns that inflation and rising debt among low-income households could slow the fall. Kazakhstan: geography covers where the deposits lie, and Kazakhstan: politics how the state that owns most of them is run.