Kazakhstan, Central Asia's largest economy, raised its 2011 industrial output growth forecast on Tuesday to 6.0 percent from 4.8 percent, due to projected growth in mining and processing, Reuters reported.
"Industrial production in 2011, according to our revised evaluation, will grow by 6 percent, exceeding the previous estimate by 1.2 percentage points," Economy Minister Kairat Kelimbetov told a cabinet meeting.
Industrial production in the mining sector was forecast to grow by 3.6 percent in 2011 and in the processing sector by 9.7 percent, Kelimbetov said.
Kazakhstan's industrial production rose by 10.0 percent in 2010, compared with 1.7 percent growth in the previous year.
The country, which holds about 3 percent of the world's recoverable oil reserves and is the world's largest uranium miner, expects gross domestic product (GDP) to expand by 7.0 percent this year, matching last year's growth.
Kazakhstan's government had also revised its forecast budget deficit for 2011 to 730.4 billion tenge ($4.95 billion), or 2.8 percent of GDP, Kelimbetov said.
It had previously forecast a deficit of 696 billion tenge, or 2.9 percent of GDP.
Kelimbetov said the government had raised its forecast for the global average price of Brent crude LCOc1 in 2011 to $90 a barrel from an earlier estimate of $65 a barrel. ($1 = 147.355 tenge)