Economic activity in January looks uneven across segments as statistics sends puzzling signals

KAZAKHSTAN - In Brief 12 Feb 2025 by Evgeny Gavrilenkov

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The National Bureau of Statistics began publishing its regular macroeconomic statistics for January, and some data appear surprising. For instance, passenger transportation continued to grow fast in January (by 15.0% y-o-y) having increased by 13.8% in 2024 as a whole. Freight transportation grew by 13.8% y-o-y last month after a modest growth in 2024 (by 2.6%) and 9.9% y-o-y in December alone. Transport statistics point to the fact that Kazakhstan steadily becomes an important transit hub (not only regional, but intercontinental also). At the same time activity in the communications segment reportedly shrank in January (by 0.5% y-o-y) after a 5.0% growth in 2024 as a whole and 2.5% y-o-y in December alone. As opposed to transportation, this segment appears on a decelerating path. Strangely enough, total trade (wholesale and retail) posted a sudden sharp growth deceleration in January to 3.8% and 4.2% respectively. In 2024 as a whole, these two segments combined grew at 9.1% and in some months in 2H24 they posted double-digit y-o-y growth. It looks even more unusual that this reported January’s deceleration occurred amid a low base as in January 2024 retail and wholesale trade segments were up by almost the same numbers 3.4% and 3.7%. Moreover, reportedly, in January retail sales fell by 44% m-o-m (seasonally unadjusted), which looks puzzling amid continuous growth in household credit (by 1.7% m-o-m in December). It is not unusual for retail sales to decline in the aftermath of December Christmas and New Year sales, but not that much. In Russia, for instance, retail sales usually fall in January by about 20% compared to December, and in Kazakhstan January’s decline was...