Kazakh president signs amendments to 2024 budget, increasing its deficit to 2.7% of GDPKazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has signed a law amending the country's budget for 2024-2026, the presidential press service said.The law was drafted in connection with changes in the indicators of the country's 2024 budget. According to the updated budget, its revenues are now projected at 14.1 trillion tenge (12%, or 2 trillion tenge less than the initial budget), and expenditures are projected at 24 trillion tenge (a 0.4% increase). The budget deficit has been increased from 3.5 trillion tenge (2.6% of the GDP) to 3.6 trillion tenge (2.7% of the GDP).The causes of the reduction of the budget revenues are, in particular, the reduction of oil extraction volumes, an increase in VAT refunds (due to debt repayment for VAT compensation for 2023 in an amount of 594 billion tenge). The reasons also include unstable external factors such as global prices for the main Kazakh exports, as well as the logistics costs of large companies.The document contains the same macroeconomic forecast for 2024: oil price $80 per barrel, exchange rate 460 tenge/$1, inflation 6-8%.Due to the non-fulfilment of the revenue part of the budget, it is planned to increase the target transfer from the National Fund, where Kazakhstan's revenues from oil and gas projects are accumulated, by two trillion tenge to 3.6 trillion tenge. The money will be used to support the development of the regions and to financial socially significant and strategic infrastructure projects. (ICE ALMATY)

Fonte notizia: INTERFAX