BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 10
Trend:
Proceeding from the assessment results, the business activity index in Kazakhstan increased in February, amounting to 50.6 (in January - 50.0), Trend reports with reference to the National Bank of Kazakhstan.
The increase in the index has been stipulated by the recovery of business activity in the services sector to 50.6 (in January - 49.4).
The values of the indices did not change greatly in industry and construction and amounted to 51.4 and 46.0 (in January - 51.8 and 45.7).
As for districts, business activity improved in eight districts while deteriorated in nine districts in February. The highest level of business activity was observed in the Turkistan region (56.2) and Shymkent (53.7), the lowest level - in the Jambyl region (44.7) and in Almaty (45.7).
The enterprises assessed the current conditions negatively in February 2022, but the assessment was better than in January. The balance of responses between positive and negative assessment was (-)1.4 increasing from (-)2.3 in January.
The assessment of all factors improved except for the assessment of access to finance/credit, which turned out to be negative (-0.5) for the first time since January 2021.
Moreover, the assessment of changes in other factors, namely, tax burden, demand, business protection issues, despite the improvement, remain negative (respectively (-)5.5, (-)4.0, and (-)1.1). The assessment of infrastructure change (0.7) turned out to be positive.
The optimism of enterprises regarding the future business conditions for the next six months increased. The assessment of future conditions was 21.5 (in January - 17.9) while the assessment of current conditions improved to (-)1.4 (in January - (-)2.3).
As a result, the composite business climate index for the economy increased greatly to 11.4 (in January - 7.4).
Some 465 enterprises were involved in the survey in February 2022, namely, 71 in construction, 177 in industry, 217 in services.