The Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan has approved liquidity criteria for securities to be applied in stock exchange trading starting January 1, 2026.
The corresponding Decree No. 818 was signed on October 2, 2025.
The document is aimed at encouraging companies to engage in more active trading, expanding the supply of securities, and supporting IPOs to further develop and enhance the liquidity of Kazakhstan’s stock market.
The decree establishes liquidity criteria for securities that serve as the basis for applying tax incentives to dividends and interest paid on such instruments.
Liquidity criteria
When trading securities on the stock exchange (excluding units of mutual investment funds and debt securities), the following criteria must be met simultaneously:
- The total volume of executed transactions in securities on exchanges operating in Kazakhstan must be at least 25 million tenge per calendar month;
- The number of executed transactions in securities on exchanges operating in Kazakhstan must be at least 50 transactions per calendar month;
- Securities must be placed through an IPO (Initial Public Offering) or SPO (Secondary Public Offering), or the number of securities in free circulation must be at least 10 percent of the total number of issued securities, excluding those repurchased by the issuer.
When trading units of mutual investment funds on exchanges operating in Kazakhstan, the following criteria must be met simultaneously:
- The volume of transactions with fund units must be at least 20 million tenge per calendar month;
- The number of transactions with fund units must be at least 10 transactions per calendar month.
- When trading debt securities within a single issuance on exchanges operating in Kazakhstan, for the purposes of sub-paragraph 7) of Article 681 of the Tax Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the applicable criterion is that the volume of debt securities issued through open trading and in circulation under the same issuance must be at least 1 billion tenge.
Clarification
When calculating the number of securities in free circulation, from the total number of issued securities (excluding those repurchased by the issuer), the following securities are excluded:
- those owned by the state;
- those held by officers of the issuer and their close relatives;
- those held by legal entities in which the issuer’s officers or their close relatives are major shareholders, hold a significant ownership interest, or act as officers;
- those held by legal entities in which the issuer’s major shareholders or their close relatives are major shareholders, hold a significant ownership interest, or act as officers;
- those held by subsidiaries of the issuer and subsidiaries of the issuer’s major shareholders;
- those held by persons who own 10 percent or more of the total number of issued securities of the issuer (net of those repurchased by the issuer).
Source: Uchet.kz
