NUR-SULTAN / ex ASTANA (Satrapia) – Rising prices of construction materials is a global trend, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Industry and Infrastructure Development (MIID) Beibut Atamkulov declared.

According to Stroim Dom company, construction materials in Kazakhstan have doubled in price over the past 2.5 years.

For the Minsiter of the MIID, there has been a general rise in the price of raw materials and scrap metal has increased in price around the world. At a briefing on Wednesday, Atamkulov said:

This year it is a global trend — we, our neighbours and all over the world have seen a very sharp increase in construction steel, construction rebar. This is due to the fact that so many countries after the pandemic are emerging from the economic crisis and are actively building.

Explaining the rise in steel, Atamkulov said:

Now our market is growing fast, from 320,000-330,000 tenge [/m²] now it has almost reached already 400,000 tenge. We buy a huge amount of steel from the neighbouring Russian Federation, and we have our own production, but it is not enough. Construction is growing fast. This year we have to build 17 mln m² of housing. All this has affected the price parameters.

Also, he explained the increase in cement prices:

I would like to assure our citizens that the volume of cement, its production capacity in our country is sufficient. Today we produce 15 mln tons of cement at 12 cement plants. At the same time, the demand of the construction industry is only 9.3 mln tonnes. In four months we have already produced 30% more than last year. At the same time there is an artificial rush going on, the average price of cement at our plants today is 21-22,000 tenge. In fact, this rush is probably what caused some of the consequences.

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The minister claims that the prices at the mills are only up by 5%.

Last May Talgat Yergaliev, the Chairman of the Union of Builders of Kazakhstan (UBK), declared that one of the main reasons of the rising prices for housing in Kazakhstan is the Tenge devaluation and the pandemic. He also pointed to rising prices of basic construction materials. The head of UBK said that the companies which won the state tenders for housing construction in the country were in a state of semi-bankruptcy, and that the people moving into the public housing were dissatisfied with its quality. According to Yergaliev, the money from the Single Accumulative Pension Fund isn’t enough to stimulate the housing market.