The volume of remittances from Russia to Kazakhstan in March 2023 amounted to 12.2 billion tenge ($27.5 million), an increase of 168% for the year, i.e. 2.7 times, RBC May 5 reported with reference to statistics from the National Bank of Kazakhstan. In dollars the growth was 171%.
The data include transfers through the money transfer systems Zolotaya Korona, Contact, Unistream, and others (in March 2023 there were 61.6 thousand transfers). Russia is the leader in the volume of intercountry remittances to Kazakhstan: its share by volume is 41%, by number of transfers – 54%.
During the first quarter of 2023 33.9 billion tenge were transferred from Russia to Kazakhstan. This exceeds the figure for the same period of 2022 by more than 300%. For the whole of 2022, 357 billion tenge, or about $775.4 million, were sent from Russia to Kazakhstan, and this is a record since at least 2014 – statistics are available from this period.
The figure in dollars is 6.8 times higher than the volume of remittances sent to this country in 2021.
One of the main reasons for the growth in remittances is the relocation of citizens from Russia to other countries, the opening of cards in Kazakhstan, as well as gaining popularity for the purchase of certain goods abroad, which were not available in Russia due to sanctions, experts previously polled by RBC said.
According to Vedomosti, in addition to Russia, among the leaders in the number of transfers to Kazakhstan are Uzbekistan (10.4%), South Korea (9.9%), the United States (9.7%) and Turkey (6%).
