The second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which remains the headline of all news in politics and economics, is almost over. The global economy is gradually recovering, but there are still risks of a new wave of a pandemic. Due to continued uncertainty, the IMF slightly worsened its forecast for global economic growth to 5.9% in 2021 compared to the July World Economic Outlook, forecast for 2022 was 4.9%. The June assessment of the World Bank for the current year remains positive and amounts to 5.6%.
The broad-based fiscal stimulus and soft monetary conditions in the world resulted in the accelerated growth of the general price level due to pent-up demand. Both developed and developing countries faced the inflationary pressures.
According to the Ministry of National Economy of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the economy of Kazakhstan for 9 months of 2021 grew by 3.4%, thereby signaling the entry into the trajectory of recovery growth. But the main problem of the economy was the rise in prices for all components of the CPI. The government in a “manual” mode constantly monitors food prices, using non-market administrative levers of local executive bodies and market mechanisms of the Agency for the Protection and Development of Competition to restrain their growth. The growth in real estate prices continues: in September this year, the price index for the sale of new housing increased by 13.1% in annual terms, and the price index for the resale of comfortable housing - by 24%.
In this Macroeconomic Outlook for Kazakhstan, the assessment for 2021 and the forecast for 2022 is based on the following assumptions:
The price of Brent crude oil will form on average in 2021 at the level of $68.6/bbl, in 2022 - $66/bbl;
The growth of the economies of the trading partner countries in 2021 will grow by 5.3%, in 2022 - by 4.3%;
The volume of oil and gas condensate production in Kazakhstan in 2021 will reach 86 million tons, in 2022 - 86.5 million tons.
Under these conditions, AERC estimates that the real GDP of Kazakhstan in 2021 will grow by 3.8%. This result is the consensus of the aggregate demand and aggregate supply models, taking into account the mentioned assumptions. GDP growth for 2021 was predicted by AERC at 3.9% in July.
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