Kazakhstan’s official statistics are close to full alignment with OECD best policies and practices across most areas assessed, according to the organisation’s review of the country’s national statistical system. The report recognises progress in digitalisation while identifying remaining gaps in public sector debt, business statistics and environmental-economic accounts, DKNews.kz reports.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development assessed the accuracy, credibility, coverage and timeliness of Kazakhstan’s statistics, alongside their consistency with international standards and accessibility to users.
“For most of the statistical subject domains under review, Kazakhstan’s official statistics are close to full alignment with OECD best policies and practices,” the report states.
The findings concern how official data are produced and made available. For researchers, businesses and investors using Kazakhstan’s economic indicators, the review provides an assessment of their quality and international comparability.
Digital records are changing how statistics are compiled
A central reform is the growing use of information already held by government agencies, supplemented by alternative sources such as fiscal receipts and mobile positioning data.
These sources can reduce the need to repeatedly request information from businesses and households. Traditional surveys continue to play a role, with digital records increasingly complementing them.
The OECD highlights Kazakhstan’s development of digital statistical registers and their integration with government data. These registers organise and update information about the people, businesses and other entities covered by statistical work.
Kazakhstan is also moving gradually towards a register-based population census, making greater use of existing records. The transition is intended to reduce the information that residents must provide directly.
Artificial intelligence and automation offer further potential for processing large datasets, identifying anomalies, classifying information and supporting forecasting.
Gaps remain in debt, business and environmental data
The OECD’s positive assessment is accompanied by recommendations for further improvement. Areas requiring additional development include:
- Public sector debt statistics.
- Structural business statistics, covering the characteristics and activities of enterprises.
- Business demography, which tracks the creation and closure of enterprises.
- Environmental-economic accounts, linking economic activity with environmental resources and impacts.
- Trade statistics broken down by enterprise characteristics.
The recommendations extend beyond collecting more information. Users also need to understand what a dataset covers, how it was compiled and which methods were used to calculate the figures.
The OECD therefore calls for greater detail in published data and clearer metadata—the explanations that accompany statistics and help users interpret them correctly.
Work to address several gaps is already under way, particularly in environmental-economic accounting and trade statistics by enterprise characteristics.
The review examined the system over three years
The assessment was conducted in 2023–2025 at the initiative of Kazakhstan’s Bureau of National Statistics, part of the Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms. OECD experts made three visits to the country and examined the legal, institutional, methodological and technological foundations of official statistics.
Its scope ranged from national accounts, prices and employment to foreign trade, household income, well-being and environmental-economic accounting.
In 2025, Kazakhstan joined the OECD Recommendation on Good Statistical Practice. According to the Bureau, it was the first country in the Commonwealth of Independent States to do so. The recommendation sets out principles for the quality, independence, objectivity and transparency of official statistics.
The review’s recommendations will inform further development of Kazakhstan’s statistical system, including broader coverage, more detailed breakdowns and clearer explanations of how indicators are calculated.
One practical example of using digital records is monitoring food prices through online cash-register data. Our earlier coverage explains how fiscal receipts were incorporated into Kazakhstan’s price monitoring alongside official statistics.
