Kazakhstan plans to eliminate subsidy payments for farmers.

“A recurring situation year after year. Why? This year we allocated subsidies amounting to 1 billion dollars, 453 billion tenge. This has never happened before, even though we started with 100 billion a decade ago. This could go on indefinitely. Starting next year, we will stop providing cash subsidies. Yesterday, the president instructed that farmers should be given loans at no more than 5%,” said Jumangarin during a meeting of the Mazhilis committee on agricultural issues.

According to him, the practice of granting subsidies to all agricultural producers needs to be halted, and government funds should be directed to support profitable producers.

“If there is no money, then there is no need to queue up. I instructed to close this. If there is no money, we will not pay. But our farmers are accustomed to this. We cannot stop it all at once, but we have plans to end this by 2028-2029. We will provide subsidies to those sectors that are in demand, profitable, and of high quality – the priority sectors that we need to develop,” the Deputy Prime Minister clarified.

During the meeting, the Minister of Agriculture Ayderbek Saparov informed that the initial demand for subsidies from the regions amounted to 359.1 billion tenge.

He stated that the Ministry of Agriculture had prepared a corresponding request and sent it to the Ministry of Finance; however, the Ministry of Finance expressed the position that local executive bodies need to find resources from the local budget.

“In this regard, several regions have found additional resources from the local budget by reallocating funds and have reduced the stated need. As of today, the additional need declared by the regions for subsidies amounts to 256.8 billion tenge,” Saparov clarified.