ASTANA, Kazakhstan, September 4. The capitalization of the Kazakhstan's stock market amounted to 37 trillion tenge (about $80.5 billion) as of August 1, 2023, having increased over July 2023 by 1 trillion tenge (about $2.2 billion) or 2.8 percent, Trend reports.
The data of Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan for regulation and development of the financial market shows that since the beginning of 2023, the overall growth was 3.8 percent.
The capitalization of the equity market increased by 4.7 percent or 1.1 trillion tenge (about $2.4 billion) to 23.9 trillion tenge or about $52 billion (from the beginning of 2023 - an increase of 13.1 percent). The 13.1 percent increase since the start of 2023 was primarily driven by the rising prices of shares of index companies.
The KASE (Kazakhstan Stock Exchange) index in July 2023 increased by 2.9 percent to 3,707.7 points (from the beginning of 2023 - an increase of 14 percent). As of August 1, 2023, the trading list of the KASE comprised 100 stock names from 86 issuers. The volume of trading in shares in July this year amounted to 16.5 billion tenge (about $35.9 million), having increased over the month by 72.6 percent or 6.9 billion tenge ($15 million), mainly due to an increase in the volume of trading in shares of National Company KazMunayGas, Maten Petroleum JSC and JSC NNC Kazatomprom.
The KASE Index is the ratio of included market prices for representative list shares at the list development date to these list share prices at a certain date, weighted on capitalization considering free-floating shares.
Kazakhstan is looking to develop its stock market, setting this as priority. There are two stock exchanges in Kazakhstan - the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) and the Astana International Financial Center (AIX).
As President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said earlier, the two stock exchanges largely duplicate each other, and sometimes even compete with each other, which is redundant for the country's financial system.
In order to increase the capacity and attractiveness of the domestic market, it was decided to work on potentially combining the two exchanges into a single management.