Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2
By Elena Kosolapova – Trend:
Kazakhs were actively starting individual businesses in 2016.
The number of self-employed entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan increased by almost 75,000 or 6 percent, to 1.3 million, Finprom.kz analytical service has said in a report.
Average profit margins of self-employed entrepreneurs also increased in 2016. For example, the number of private interpreters whose monthly income does not exceed 60,000 tenges decreased by 90,000.
Meanwhile, the number of self-employed people with high incomes increased in 2016.
The number of self-employed entrepreneurs, whose incomes range between 60,000 tenges and 100,000 tenges per month, increased by 91,000.
As much as 33,000 self-employed entrepreneurs had monthly incomes exceeding 100,000 tenges in Kazakhstan in 2016. The income of 6,500 of them exceeded 400,000 tenges.
The growth of entrepreneurship in Kazakhstan takes place against the background of huge state support to small businesses.
In 2016, Kazakh banks issued 3 trillion tenges in loans to small and medium businesses. This is 24 percent of the total volume of loans to the economy.
The volume of loans to small businesses grew by 1 trillion tenges, or 50 percent, in 2016.
Meanwhile, total lending to Kazakhstan’s economy increased by only 1 percent over the year.
(313.8 tenges = $1)