Number of entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan increased by half a million – Zhumangarin

Despite large-scale changes in tax legislation, the number of entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan continued to grow. In the first half of 2026, the country recorded 2,939,000 business entities, which is 499,000 or 20.4% more than at the beginning of the year. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.

These figures were announced at a government meeting by Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of National Economy Serik Zhumangarin.

According to the State Revenue Committee, the total number of individual entrepreneurs and self-employed individuals increased from 1,860,000 to 2,352,000 people. Meanwhile, the number of legal entities rose from 579,756 to 587,117, and the number of VAT payers increased from 135,845 to 158,194.

The minister noted that entrepreneurial activity maintains positive dynamics and remains resilient to external and internal economic changes.

The growth in the number of SMEs was accompanied by changes in the sectoral structure. For instance, the number of small legal entities increased in mining (by 2.9%), construction and agriculture (by 2.5%), and information and communication (by 2.4%). Among medium-sized enterprises, the largest growth was recorded in real estate operations (5.8%), finance and insurance (3.2%), and other services (3.1%).

According to Zhumangarin, the share of small and medium-sized businesses in GDP continues to increase, reaching 40.9% in 2025 compared to 33.5% in 2021.

Additionally, in the first quarter of 2026, the number of employed people in the economy grew to 9.4 million, of which 4.5 million work in the SME sector.

The ministry believes that current trends indicate increased transparency of the business environment and adaptation of businesses to new economic conditions.

It is worth noting that a new Tax Code came into effect in Kazakhstan on January 1, 2026. The document, in particular, raised the VAT rate from 12% to 16%, lowered the threshold for mandatory VAT registration from 20,000 MCI to 10,000 MCI (from 86.5 million tenge to 43.25 million tenge), and limited the ability of large and medium-sized businesses to deduct transactions with entrepreneurs working under a simplified declaration and not registered as VAT payers.