Kursiv Research is moving to a detailed examination of bond issues by key issuers on the domestic stock market over the past 5 years – a period when it began its transformation from an almost entirely tenge-based market to a tenge-dollar-yuan one. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
In the previous material, Kursiv Research recorded the peak share of non-residents in Kazakhstani government securities (KGS). Now the object of analysis will be debt securities issued on both Kazakhstani stock exchanges – the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) and the Astana International Exchange (AIX) – placed between January 2020 and August 2026, with placement parameters reflected on the exchanges' websites. Government bonds of foreign governments were excluded from the list, and foreign currency liabilities were converted into tenge at the exchange rate on the corresponding date.
According to these calculations, the total volume of debt placement on KASE and AIX at the end of 2025 exceeded 26 trillion tenge, which is 26% less than in 2024. This figure is important to note, but it should not be used to judge the domestic securities market. Between 20% and 70% of this volume (in 2025 – 6.6 trillion, or 25% of all placements), depending on the year, falls on short-term (usually 28-day) notes of the National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) – a liquidity management tool at the market scale.
At any given moment, the volume of notes in circulation over the past few years has not exceeded 2 trillion tenge, and for most of the period it was in the range of 0.5–1.0 trillion tenge. During 2026, the volume of NBK note issuance decreased noticeably, while the volume in circulation in some months reached 1.7 trillion. The increase in the volume of notes in circulation is associated with an adjustment to the NBK's set of instruments, which since the beginning of 2026 has increased the limit on monthly notes to 1.0 trillion, and also began issuing 3-month notes with a limit of 0.5 trillion.
The Ministry of Finance of Kazakhstan – historically the second-largest by turnover and the most significant issuer on the Kazakhstani debt securities market – has issued medium- and long-term debt over the past 5 years. In 2025, the volume of KGS placements by the Ministry of Finance amounted to 6.6 trillion tenge, providing 25% of all market placements.
International financial organizations accounted for 2% of placements in 2025, quasi-state companies – 26%, and the private corporate sector – 21%. We will return to the latter two groups of issuers with a detailed analysis in subsequent materials of the series.
Until 2023, up to 80% of all debt placements on Kazakhstani stock exchanges by nominal value were in tenge. In 2024, against the backdrop of a high real base rate of the NBK and the strengthening of the Kazakh currency, foreign currency bonds became increasingly popular among issuers: by the end of 2025, such placements accounted for 37% of the structure, with the majority being dollar-denominated securities. A detailed analysis of these issuers' placements will be devoted to several materials, but for now we will focus on the bond issuance of the Ministry of Finance of Kazakhstan.
The last few years have been a period when the Ministry of Finance, following the market, first swung sharply into tenge instruments, and then into foreign currency. In the COVID year of 2020, the share of tenge-denominated KGS placements was 78%, but three years later, in 2023, against the backdrop of a lower base rate, almost all of the Ministry of Finance's debt placements on KASE and AIX were in tenge.
In 2024, the debt boat washed up on the foreign currency shore: foreign currency loans accounted for 24% – all of them in dollars. The following year set a record: in the structure of Ministry of Finance placements, dollar loans accounted for 32%, and another 6% were denominated in euros.
The incomplete 8 months of 2026 showed some cooling of the trend: only 10% of debt placements by volume were denominated in non-tenge currencies. But not in dollars or euros, but in yuan.
This year became the first when yuan-denominated securities appeared in the arsenal of the Ministry of Finance: at the end of May, the Government of Kazakhstan attracted 3-year bonds on AIX in the amount of 3.4 billion yuan (244 billion tenge at the exchange rate for the corresponding period) with a coupon of 1.90%. For comparison: the yield on Chinese government securities with similar maturity at that time did not exceed 1.40%. It was these bonds that provided the foreign currency component in the incomplete 8 months of 2026.
Dollar liquidity, which was actively attracted last year, also costs the Government of Kazakhstan relatively cheaply: from 4.41% to 5.50% for issues with maturities from 5 to 10 years. For comparison: the yield on corresponding US Treasuries during the same periods, according to FRED, averaged 3.90–4.30%. The weighted average yield on placed dollar-denominated government debt moved from 6.50% in 2022 to 4.92% in 2025.
The correction of the currency structure of KGS issuance makes the government's foreign currency liabilities not only cheaper on average, but also more flexible. The average maturity of dollar bonds placed in 2022 exceeded 20 years, while placements in 2024 and 2025 became shorter on average – 11 and 8 years, respectively.
The Ministry of Finance, on the contrary, is trying to stretch the tenge debt in terms of maturity as much as possible under the conditions of the NBK's high base rate: if the weighted average maturity of tenge debt issued in 2022–2024 was 4–6 years, then issues in 2025 and 2026 – 7 and 5 years, respectively.
The yuan loan, although it looks shorter, allows raising funds at an extremely low rate (especially against the backdrop of the tenge's cost) and diversifying the structure of government debt.
In the next material, Kursiv Research will analyze placements on KASE and AIX by quasi-state sector entities.