Kazakhstan retains GDP growth at 5.1%

GDP growth in Kazakhstan in the H1 2013 made up 5.1%, a Tengrinews.kz journalist reports from a government sitting.“Despite the lingering uncertainty of the global economy, Kazakhstan’s economy has been stable, with the GDP growing 5.1% in the H1 2013. The annual inflation stands at 5.9%”, Economic Affairs Minister Erbolat Dossayev said.According to him, growth in processing industries for the period made up 1.8%, with mining industry seeing growth of 2.2%.The economy growth is driven by the growing consumer spending: the country’s retail turnover has grown by 12.3% since the start of the year.“There has been a steady trend towards growing capital investments: the figure grew by 7.9% for the period”, Minister Dossayev elaborated.He believes with the positive trends in place Kazakhstan will be able to boost its GDP by 6% by the year end.Kazakhstan’s foreign trade operations with the Customs Union member states [Russia and Belarus] increased 1.8% in Jan-May against the like period of 2012, with the figure making up $9.4 billion.“The situation at the labor market has been also stable, with the unemployment level standing at only 5.2% as of June”, the Minister said.Minister Dossayev briefed among other things that the country’s exports for the first five months diminished by 10.8%: crude exports decresed by 5.5%, exports of ferrum alloys fell by 10.8%, exports of aluminum fell by 17.2%, with grain exports falling by 61.3%. The country’s imports for the period grew by 10.3%.