Investment Preferences and the Investment Contract in Kazakhstan in 2026: the New Architecture After the 1 January Reform

A completely rebuilt investment preference regime has applied in Kazakhstan since 1 January 2026. Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 215-VIII of 18 July 2025 excluded articles 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 295-1 and 295-3 from the Entrepreneurial Code and inserted a new block, articles 283-1 to 283-5, in their place. Investment preferences are now granted under one of three instruments only — an investment agreement, an investment obligations agreement or a simplified investment contract — and under one of them at a time. The tax side moved into chapter 81 of the new Tax Code No. 214-VIII, which took effect on the same day.

The key risk. Almost the entire body of published commentary on Kazakhstan’s investment preferences describes rules that are no longer in force: the investment priority project, the special investment contract, the investment subsidy and article 288 on in-kind grants. State in-kind grants have not, however, been abolished — they were moved into article 283-3 and are available under two instruments: the simplified investment contract and the investment agreement. What has to be checked is not only the figure but the article number: article 295-2 was headed “Investment agreement” in 2021 and, since 1 January 2026, is headed “Conclusion and termination of an investment obligations agreement”.

Item	Value	Basis
Operative redaction of the regime	From 1 January 2026	Law of the RK No. 215-VIII of 18.07.2025
Number of instruments	Three, only one at a time	arts. 283(2) and 283(3-1) of the Entre­preneu­rial Code
Threshold for a new production facility	2,000,000 MRP — KZT 8,650,000,000	art. 283-1(1)(3) of the Entre­preneu­rial Code
Threshold for expanding a production facility	5,000,000 MRP — KZT 21,625,000,000	art. 283-1(1)(4) of the Entre­preneu­rial Code
Threshold for an investment obligations agreement	75,000,000 MRP — KZT 324,375,000,000 over 8 years	art. 283-2(1) of the Entre­preneu­rial Code
MRP for 2026	KZT 4,325	art. 7 of the Law on the Republican Budget for 2026–2028
Corporate income tax reduction	By 100 per cent	art. 283-4(2)(1) of the Entre­preneu­rial Code; art. 736(2) of the Tax Code
Land tax	Coefficient 0	art. 736(2) of the Tax Code
Property tax	Rate of 0 per cent	art. 736(2) of the Tax Code
Ceiling for the corporate income tax preference	10 years for a new facility, 3 years for an expansion	art. 736(4) of the Tax Code
Ceiling for the land tax preference	10 years	art. 736(3)(2) of the Tax Code
Ceiling for the property tax preference	8 years	art. 736(3)(3) of the Tax Code
Tax legislation stability	10 years, with five carve-outs	arts. 737(2) and 737(3) of the Tax Code
Maximum in-kind grant	30 per cent of investment in long-term assets	art. 283-3(5) of the Entre­preneu­rial Code
Customs duty exemption	Up to 5 years, simplified contract only	art. 283-5 of the Entre­preneu­rial Code
Time limit for deciding an application	60 working days	art. 293(1) of the Entre­preneu­rial Code

What investment preferences are, and who can obtain them

Investment preferences are targeted advantages granted under Kazakh law to two categories of person: Kazakh legal entities implementing an investment project, and leasing companies importing technological equipment under a finance lease for such an entity. The definition is in article 283(1) of the Entrepreneurial Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 375-V of 29 October 2015.

Who counts as a Kazakh legal entity

The Code says so expressly: “a legal entity of the Republic of Kazakhstan is a legal entity, including a legal entity with foreign participation, created in the manner established by the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan”.

Foreign participation is no obstacle. The obstacle is the form of presence: the preferences go to a Kazakh legal entity, not to a branch or representative office of a foreign company and not to the foreign investor itself. In practice the project is structured through a Kazakh limited liability partnership or joint stock company; the choice of form and the registration procedure are set out in our guide to registering a Kazakh LLP for foreigners.

The leasing company as the second beneficiary

Article 283(1)(2) extends the preferences to leasing companies importing technological equipment for an investment project under a finance lease for the Kazakh legal entity implementing that project. This allows the equipment import to be placed with the lessor without losing the customs relief. A linked rule sits in article 294(4): where the contract provides for the acquisition of equipment under a finance lease, the contract must end nine months after the lease ends.

What the preferences cannot deliver

Article 283(5) sets a hard limit: “complete exemption of persons that have concluded investment contracts from the performance of their tax obligation in respect of the activity carried on under the terms of investment contracts is not permitted”.

That is not a declaration. It explains why even a 100 per cent reduction of corporate income tax does not release the taxpayer from filing returns, from keeping records or from indirect taxes, and why stability under an investment obligations agreement does not reach value added tax or excise. The detail is in the tax sections below.

Who decides

The decision to grant tax preferences is taken by the authorised investment body on consideration of applications, in the manner determined by the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan (article 283(3)). The decision takes account of the materials submitted with the application under article 292 and of the opinion of the body competent for the priority activity concerned.

Law of the RK No. 324-VIII of 24 June 2026 added a further condition: for subjects of industrial and innovation activity, the decision also takes account of the production capacity balance assessment formed under the Law “On Industrial Policy”. The Law was published in the newspapers Egemen Qazaqstan and Kazakhstanskaya Pravda on 25 June 2026 and takes effect on the expiry of sixty calendar days from first official publication — that is, from 25 August 2026.

The legal framework as it stands in September 2026

Kazakhstan’s investment preference regime rests on two codes and four subordinate acts; there has been no standalone “investment law” since 2015. The Laws “On Investments” and “On State Support of Direct Investments” were absorbed into the Entrepreneurial Code, and a citation to either in 2026 commentary is a marker of stale analysis.

The statutory layer

Instrument	What it governs	Status as at September 2026
Entre­preneu­rial Code No. 375-V of 29.10.2015, articles 281–296	The concept of preferences, the three instruments, grants, customs, procedure, termination	In force; the block 283-1 to 283-5 introduced from 01.01.2026
Entre­preneu­rial Code, articles 314–315	The investment ombudsman	Article 314 in the redaction of Law No. 306-VIII of 11.06.2026, from 01.07.2026
Tax Code No. 214-VIII, chapter 81, articles 736–737	Tax preferences under investment contracts	In force from 01.01.2026
Tax Code, paragraph 4, articles 283–285	Investment tax preferences — a different regime	In force from 01.01.2026
Tax Code, articles 836–839	Preservation of terms under contracts predating 01.01.2026	In force
Law on the Republican Budget for 2026–2028, article 7	MRP of KZT 4,325 from 1 January 2026	In force

The subordinate layer

Instrument	Subject	Currency
Government Resolution No. 13 of 14.01.2016	The model contract; the list of priority activities; rules on engaging experts	In force; the list amended by Resolutions No. 615 of 14.07.2026 and No. 635 of 17.07.2026
Government Resolution No. 312 of 17.05.2022	Rules and model form of the investment obligations agreement	In force; preamble restated by Resolution No. 1063 of 08.12.2025, from 01.01.2026
Order of the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs No. 11-1-4/113 of 17.03.2023, MoJ No. 32095	Rules on concluding, amending and terminating investment agreements	In force; amended by order No. 11-1-4/328 of 16.06.2026, from 01.07.2026
Order of the acting Minister for Investments and Development No. 1281 of 30.12.2015, MoJ No. 12780	Rules on receiving, registering and considering the application for investment preferences	In force; the Rules in the redaction of order No. 11-1-4/390 of 25.07.2023

What the 1 January 2026 reform repealed

Law of the RK No. 215-VIII of 18 July 2025 excluded seven articles from the Entrepreneurial Code with effect from 1 January 2026. The footnote under each of them on the Adilet portal reads identically: “excluded by Law of the RK No. 215-VIII of 18.07.2025 (takes effect from 01.01.2026)”.

•          Article 286 “Conditions for granting investment preferences”;

•          article 287 “Exemption from customs duties”;

•          article 288 “State in-kind grants”;

•          article 289 “Guarantees of stability on changes in Kazakh legislation”;

•          article 290 “Tax preferences”;

•          article 295-1 “Conclusion and termination of a special investment contract”;

•          article 295-3 “Investment obligations agreement”.

Earlier, Law of the RK No. 399-VI of 2 January 2021 excluded article 291 “Investment subsidy”.

The recycled-number trap

Article 295-2 was inserted by Law No. 399-VI in 2021 under the heading “Investment agreement” and was restated by Law No. 215-VIII from 1 January 2026 under the heading “Conclusion and termination of an investment obligations agreement”. The same number denotes two different institutions depending on the date.

This is not a theoretical problem. The Minister of Foreign Affairs’ order on the rules for concluding investment agreements still cites article 295-2(2) of the Entrepreneurial Code in its preamble — a provision that from 2026 governs a different instrument. The operative basis for those rules is now article 283-1(6).

Three instruments and the single-choice rule

Article 283(2) of the Entrepreneurial Code lists exhaustively three investment contracts under whose terms investment preferences are granted: the investment agreement, the investment obligations agreement and the simplified investment contract. There is no fourth option.

Article 283(3-1) adds the restriction: “investment preferences are granted exclusively under one of the investment contracts provided for in paragraph 2 of this article”. The instruments cannot be combined.

How the instruments actually differ

The difference is not the size of the relief but who signs the contract, which preferences it carries and what entry threshold it sets.

Feature	Investment agreement	Investment obligations agreement	Simplified investment contract
Counterparty	The authorised investment body	The Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan	The authorised investment body
Tax preferences	Yes: corporate income tax, land tax, property tax	Yes: stability of tax legislation	No, expressly excluded by article 294(1)
State in-kind grant	Yes, article 283-1(7)(2)	Not provided for	Yes, up to 30 per cent
Right to engage foreign labour	Yes, article 283-1(7)(3)	Not provided for	Not provided for
Customs duty exemption	Not provided for	Not provided for	Yes, up to 5 years
Minimum investment	From 200,000 to 5,000,000 MRP by project type	75,000,000 MRP over 8 years	Not set by the Code
Basis in the Entre­preneu­rial Code	Article 283-1	Article 283-2	Article 283-3
Basis in the Tax Code	Article 736	Article 737	None

The central practical consequence of that table is that exemption from customs duties comes only with the simplified investment contract, while tax preferences come only with the other two instruments. The state in-kind grant, by contrast, is available under two of them: under the investment agreement by force of article 283-1(7)(2) and under the simplified contract by force of article 283-3(1)(1). A project that needs both zero CIT and duty-free imports has to choose.

Why the choice is made before the application, not after

Article 283-1(2) states a principle that runs through the whole structure: the agreement determines the conditions on which, and the procedure by which, the preferences provided for by Kazakh legislation at the moment the agreement is concluded. The package is fixed by the date of conclusion — not by the date of the application and not by the date the facility is commissioned.

The second paragraph of the same provision imposes a counter-requirement: where the legal entity undertakes no reciprocal obligations on the legal entity that concluded the investment agreement, investment preferences are not granted. A contract with no obligations on the investor produces no relief.

What became of the previous instruments

The investment priority project and the special investment contract ceased to exist as bases for granting preferences on 1 January 2026. Article 295-1 on the special investment contract was excluded; articles 286 and 290, which set the conditions and the tax preferences for priority projects, were excluded. The order of the Minister for Investments and Development No. 74 of 6 February 2017, which approved the application form for a special investment project, ceased to have effect from 1 January 2026.

Contracts concluded earlier remain in force; the machinery is set out in the section on transitional provisions.

The investment agreement: five project types and the MRP thresholds

The investment agreement is a contract for the implementation of an investment project between the authorised investment body and a Kazakh legal entity, available only for five expressly listed project types, each with its own minimum investment expressed in monthly calculation indices. The list is in article 283-1(1) of the Entrepreneurial Code and is closed.

The five grounds and what they mean in money

The monthly calculation index (MRP) for 2026 is KZT 4,325 — article 7 of the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On the Republican Budget for 2026–2028”. The conversion of the thresholds into tenge below is the author’s arithmetic on that figure.

Project type	Threshold in MRP	Threshold in tenge at MRP 4,325
Tourist facilities on priority tourist territories	200,000	865,000,000
New facilities in the food and light industries	1,000,000	4,325,000,000
Creation of new production facilities	2,000,000	8,650,000,000
Expansion and/or renewal of existing production facilities involving a change of fixed assets	5,000,000	21,625,000,000
New hotels, or expansion and/or reco­nstru­ction of existing hotels	1,000,000	4,325,000,000

Which MRP applies

Article 283-1(1) settles it directly: “the monthly calculation index means the monthly calculation index established by the law on the republican budget and in force on the date the application for investment preferences is filed”.

That differs from the rule for the investment obligations agreement, which uses the MRP in force on 1 January of the year the application is filed. The divergence is small in wording and material in money: an application filed on 20 December and one filed on 20 January of the following year are measured against different indices.

The hotel project: three conditions at once

Article 283-1(1)(5) is the only limb where the Code imposes requirements beyond the amount. An investment agreement for a hotel project is concluded only where three conditions are met simultaneously:

•          the project is implemented outside the cities of republican significance and the capital;

•          the services provided correspond to a “three”, “four” or “five” star category under international standards;

•          a comprehensive entrepreneurial licence (franchising) agreement or a franchise is concluded with an international hotel chain having not fewer than one thousand hotels in ten or more foreign countries.

The threshold of a thousand hotels across ten foreign countries excludes most regional chains. A project in Astana or Almaty falls outside this limb altogether, whatever the investment and whatever the star rating.

The tourism project: tied to designated territories

Limb 1 ties the project to priority tourist territories designated under the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On Tourism Activity in the Republic of Kazakhstan”. This is the lowest entry threshold in the whole structure — 200,000 MRP, or KZT 865,000,000 — but it is available only on territories on that list and only for facilities “capable of meeting a tourist’s needs in the form of long-term assets”.

What “creation of new production facilities” means

Limb 3 requires investment in the construction of new production facilities of not less than 2,000,000 MRP. The wording ties the amount to construction, not to the total project budget. Limb 4, by contrast, addresses expansion or renewal of existing production involving a change of fixed assets, with a threshold of 5,000,000 MRP — two and a half times higher. The economic logic is plain: the state pays more dearly for the expansion of an asset that already works than for the creation of a new one, and demands a larger commitment in return.

Three kinds of preference under an investment agreement

Article 283-1(7): an investment agreement provides investment preferences in the form of tax preferences, state in-kind grants and the right to engage foreign labour.

The third kind is almost never mentioned in surveys, although for a production project importing technology it can be worth as much as the tax relief: the right to engage foreign labour is conferred by the agreement itself rather than through the general permit route.

The same paragraph sets the ceiling on the tax component: the period for applying tax preferences is set according to the value of the project and the type of activity by investment category, but for no more than ten years. The procedure is determined by the authorised investment body in agreement with the authorised bodies for state support of industry, for tax policy and for securing budget revenues.

Which activities are excluded, and what the ownership structure must look like

Article 283-1(5) of the Entrepreneurial Code carries a closed list of fifteen activities for which the conclusion of an investment agreement is prohibited. The list is built as a sectoral exclusion and covers the financial sector, extraction, and the circulation of digital assets.

The excluded activities

Among the fifteen items are professional activity on the securities market; digital mining; the activity of credit bureaux; security activity; activity connected with the circulation of civil and service weapons and ammunition; subsoil use activity, including the activity of prospectors; the sale of minerals, including the activity of traders and the sale of coal and oil; and activity connected with the circulation of digital financial assets.

The subsoil-use exclusion carries a proviso that is easy to miss: “for the purposes of this sub-paragraph, a subsoil user is not regarded as such where it is a subsoil user solely by reason of holding a right to abstract groundwater and/or commonly occurring minerals for its own needs”. A plant with its own borehole for process water does not become a subsoil user on that account and does not leave the perimeter.

Two separate limbs address digital assets: digital mining and the circulation of digital financial assets are excluded independently of one another. A crypto project in Kazakhstan cannot obtain investment preferences under any of the instruments.

Who cannot be a party to the agreement

Article 283-1(4)(3) closes the investment agreement to six categories of legal entity: autonomous educational organisations; organisations operating in the territory of a special economic zone; participants of Astana Hub; participants of the Astana International Financial Centre; producers of all types of spirit, alcoholic products and tobacco products; and taxpayers applying special tax regimes.

This is an exclusion by status of the person rather than by activity, and it bites independently of the list in paragraph 5. A company registered in a special economic zone cannot conclude an investment agreement even where its project fits one of the five types perfectly.

The ownership structure and the State’s exit

Article 283-1(4)(4): the share of the state and/or a quasi-public sector entity as founder or participant (shareholder) of the Kazakh legal entity must not exceed twenty-six per cent.

For machine building, including the production of foundry goods, the ceiling is higher — no more than fifty per cent — and the duration of such participation is capped at twenty years from the date the investment contract is registered.

Within five years the state and/or the quasi-public sector entity must cease to be a founder and/or participant (shareholder). Where that condition is not met, the application of the investment preferences is suspended until full exit, but for no more than one year.

Failure to comply during the suspension period causes early termination of the investment contract and the return of the preferences already granted. The consequence is therefore not a pause but a retrospective unwinding.

How long the agreement runs

Article 283-1(6) refers the term, procedure and conditions for amending and terminating the agreement to rules approved by the authorised investment body — the Code sets no fixed maximum term for the agreement itself.

The limit comes from the other side: article 283-1(7) caps the period for applying tax preferences at ten years, and the Tax Code then sets the ceiling for each tax, from three to ten years. The twenty-year figure sometimes attributed to the investment contract belongs, in article 283-1, not to the contract but to the maximum duration of state and quasi-public participation in machine-building projects.

The order in which to run the checks

Before preparing an application it is worth running four filters in this order, because each is more expensive to fail than the last.

•          First filter — the activity. The project must fall outside all fifteen excluded limbs and inside the list of priority activities approved by the Government.

•          Second filter — the project type. The project must correspond to one of the five grounds in article 283-1(1).

•          Third filter — the amount. The investment must reach the threshold set for that ground, in MRP as at the date the application is filed.

•          Fourth filter — status and ownership structure. The applicant must fall outside all six excluded categories, and state and quasi-public participation must sit within twenty-six per cent (fifty for machine building) and must be unwound within five years.

The project’s tax profile after those filters is analysed separately; a general survey of the new system is in our guide to Kazakhstan’s tax system in 2026.

The investment obligations agreement: 75,000,000 MRP and the goods-producer test

The investment obligations agreement is an investment project under a contract between the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan and a legal entity, obliging that entity to finance not less than 75,000,000 MRP over eight years, including the year in which the application is filed. The basis is article 283-2(1) of the Entrepreneurial Code. At an MRP of KZT 4,325 that is KZT 324,375,000,000 — the author’s arithmetic.

What has to be financed

The Code frames the obligation broadly: capitalised subsequent expenditure and/or expenditure on the acquisition, production or construction of new long-term assets, together with other costs increasing the value of long-term assets under International Financial Reporting Standards and/or the requirements of Kazakh accounting legislation.

The test is an increase in the value of long-term assets under accounting rules, not the fact of construction. That is materially wider than article 283-1(1)(3), which speaks specifically of investment in the construction of new production facilities.

Which MRP applies

Article 283-2(1): the monthly calculation index established by the law on the republican budget and in force on 1 January of the year in which the application to conclude the agreement is filed.

That differs from the investment agreement, which uses the MRP at the date of the application. The practical effect is that for an investment obligations agreement the date of filing within the year is immaterial, and for an investment agreement it is not.

Four conditions on the applicant

Article 283-2(2) sets cumulative requirements.

•          The legal entity is a goods producer, excluding subsoil users extracting hydrocarbons and producers of petroleum products.

•          The legal entity is a large or medium-sized business within the meaning of the Entrepreneurial Code.

•          The legal entity does not produce excisable goods.

•          The legal entity does not apply a special tax regime.

How the goods-producer status is measured

The Code supplies its own definition for the purposes of that article: a goods producer is a legal entity for which not less than seventy per cent of aggregate annual income for the year preceding the year of application consists of income from the sale of goods of its own production, or from the sale of minerals it extracted and/or products obtained from its own processing of minerals.

Three consequences follow from that formula.

First, the test is retrospective. It looks to the year preceding the year of application. A company incorporated for the project cannot pass it, because it has no preceding year of revenue.

Second, the seventy per cent is measured against aggregate annual income, not against sales revenue. Aggregate annual income includes non-operating items, which makes the threshold stricter than it looks.

Third, processing minerals counts and trading in them does not. A company that extracts and processes passes the test; a company that buys and resells does not.

The subsoil-user exclusion here is narrower than in article 283-1: only hydrocarbon extractors and petroleum-product producers are carved out. A mining and metals project falls inside the article 283-2 perimeter although it would fall outside the article 283-1 perimeter.

What the project itself must deliver to earn the tax preference

Article 283-4(3)(2) adds a separate condition: tax preferences under an investment obligations agreement are granted where the contract provides for the acquisition, production or construction of new long-term assets or their capital reconstruction in an amount of not less than seventy-five million times the monthly calculation index.

The 75,000,000 MRP threshold therefore appears twice: as a condition of concluding the agreement under article 283-2 and as a condition of granting the tax preference under article 283-4. The two formulations are not word-for-word identical, and that is worth allowing for when drafting the work programme.

The cap on related-party transactions

Article 283-2(3) limits how far intra-group spending counts towards the investment obligations: the value of goods, works and services under contracts with a related party is counted at actual cost incurred, but at no more than fifty per cent of the amount of the obligations.

The second requirement in the same paragraph is that the related party must be a resident of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The rule closes the obvious workaround — inflating the obligation through purchases from the group’s own foreign supplier. For a holding with an overseas engineering centre it means half the amount has to be met through external contractors or through resident group companies. Pricing on those intra-group purchases attracts a separate control regime, set out in our piece on transfer pricing in Kazakhstan in 2026.

Mandatory financing of workforce training

Article 283-2(4): from the second year after the agreement is concluded, a legal entity that is not a subsoil user must annually finance the training of Kazakh personnel in an amount of not less than 20,000 MRP as in force on 1 January of the year of that financing.

At an MRP of KZT 4,325 that is not less than KZT 86,500,000 a year — the author’s arithmetic. Subsoil users finance such costs under the legislation on subsoil and subsoil use.

This is a free-standing obligation rather than part of the 75,000,000 MRP: it runs annually, and failure to meet it is a breach of the agreement in its own right.

The simplified investment contract: the only route to the customs exemption

A simplified investment contract is a contract between the authorised investment body and a legal entity of the Republic of Kazakhstan providing for the making of investments and the grant of investment preferences other than tax preferences. The basis is article 294(1) of the Entrepreneurial Code. It is the only one of the three instruments that opens access to exemption from customs duties.

What the simplified contract actually grants

Article 283-3(1) closes the list at two items.

•          State in-kind grants.

•          Exemption from customs duties.

No tax preferences are granted under a simplified investment contract. Article 294(1) says so through the express reservation “other than tax preferences”, and article 283-4, which governs tax preferences, mentions only the investment agreement and the investment obligations agreement.

The activity condition

Article 283-3(1): investment preferences under a simplified investment contract are granted where the investment project is carried out in priority activities determined by the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The list of priority activities is approved by Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 13 of 14 January 2016. It is built as a table of OKED activity codes, and checking the project against it is the first thing to do before preparing an application. The structure of the list and its divergences from the new redaction of the Code are dealt with in a separate section below.

Procedural deadlines

Article 293(1): the decision to grant investment preferences is taken within sixty working days from the date the application is registered.

Article 294(2): the simplified investment contract is prepared for signature within ten working days from the decision to grant investment preferences, using the model contract approved by the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Article 294(3): the simplified investment contract is registered with the authorised investment body within five working days after the parties sign it and enters into force on the day of registration.

The registration date is not a formality. It is the point from which the five-year ceiling on the customs exemption for equipment and components runs, and from which the maximum term of the contract itself is measured.

The special rule for finance leases

Article 294(4) sets three rules on timing at once. First: the term of the simplified investment contract is determined by the term of the investment preferences. The Code sets no separate maximum term for the contract itself.

Second: the completion date of the works under the work programme must fall no later than nine months before the end of the contract term. That is a hidden planning constraint: the work programme cannot run up against the end of the contract.

Third: where the project is implemented by a legal entity that has entered into a finance lease, the term of the investment contract must expire nine months after the expiry of the finance lease.

The rule exists for control purposes: the leasing company is exempted from duties on the same footing as the investor, and the state keeps a nine-month tail after the lease closes to confirm that the equipment reached the project and stayed in it.

The state in-kind grant: the preference wrongly believed to be abolished

A state in-kind grant is property transferred by the state to a legal entity of the Republic of Kazakhstan for temporary free use, or provided on a right of temporary free land use, with subsequent free transfer into ownership or land use once the conditions of the simplified investment contract are met. The basis is article 283-3(2) of the Entrepreneurial Code.

Where the abolition myth comes from

Article 288 of the Entrepreneurial Code, “State in-kind grants”, was excluded by Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 215-VIII of 18 July 2025 with effect from 1 January 2026. From that many conclude that the instrument no longer exists.

The conclusion is wrong: the same law introduced article 283-3, whose paragraphs 2 to 5 reproduce the in-kind grant regime in full, including the size cap. The rule was not abolished but moved into the new block of articles 283-1 to 283-5.

More than that, the in-kind grant is available under two instruments rather than one: article 283-3(1)(1) lists it among the preferences of the simplified investment contract, and article 283-1(7)(2) lists it among the preferences of the investment agreement. The rules for granting it sit in article 283-3 either way.

This is the classic error of reading the Code through its list of excluded articles without checking the new ones. The practical cost of the error is not applying where the grant is in fact available.

What can be transferred as a grant

Article 283-3(3) closes the list of eligible assets:

•          land plots;

•          buildings;

•          structures;

•          machinery and equipment;

•          computing equipment;

•          measuring and regulating instruments and devices;

•          vehicles, excluding passenger cars;

•          production and household inventory.

Passenger cars are excluded by an express statutory reservation.

The size cap

Article 283-3(5): the maximum size of a state in-kind grant is no more than thirty per cent of the volume of investment in the long-term assets of the legal entity of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Where the value of the requested property exceeds that maximum, the legal entity may receive it against payment of the difference between the value of the property and the maximum size of the grant. Thirty per cent is therefore a ceiling on the free component, not a ceiling on the asset transferred.

Article 283-3(4): state in-kind grants are valued at their market value in the manner established by the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Who decides on the transfer, and when

Article 283-3(2): grants are made by the authorised investment body in agreement with the authorised body for state property management and/or the central authorised body for land resources management, and with the local executive bodies.

The transfer happens in two stages: the property is first handed over for temporary free use or on a right of temporary free land use, and only then, once the investment obligations are performed, transferred free of charge into ownership or land use.

The basis for the second stage is a decision of the authorised investment body taken no later than three months from the date the audit report confirming the investor’s performance of the obligations under the simplified investment contract is received. The free transfer under that decision is carried out by the local executive body.

The practical point is that until the audit, the investor holds the property on a right of use rather than in ownership.When planning a project around a specific land plot it is sensible to confirm in advance that the plot is at the disposal of the relevant akimat and is unencumbered.

What happens to the grant on termination

Article 295(6): on termination of an investment contract the legal entity returns the property transferred as a state in-kind grant, or its initial value. The value is computed as at the date of transfer rather than the date of termination, which makes the exposure predictable without removing it.

Exemption from customs duties: what, for whom and for how long

Exemption from customs duties is available only under a simplified investment contract and covers four categories of imported goods: technological equipment, components for it, spare parts, and raw materials and/or materials.The basis is article 283-5(1) of the Entrepreneurial Code. Neither the investment agreement nor the investment obligations agreement carries a customs preference.

Who benefits

The exemption is granted to the legal entity of the Republic of Kazakhstan that concluded the simplified investment contract, and also to a leasing company importing technological equipment under a finance lease for that legal entity.

The second addressee matters for projects where equipment is leased rather than bought: the preference is not lost because the importer of record is the lessor. The general import rules, including import VAT and customs clearance, are set out in our piece on importing into Kazakhstan from third countries.

The statutory definitions

Technological equipment means goods intended for use in the technological process of the investment project.

Components mean constituent parts of equipment without which the technological equipment cannot be used for its intended purpose.

Spare parts mean goods intended to replace constituent parts of technological equipment.

Raw materials and/or materials mean goods intended for use as objects of labour in the production process.

The distinction is not decorative: the category into which goods fall determines both the length of the exemption and the point from which it is counted.

Terms by category

Category of goods	Length of exemption	Counted from
Technological equipment and components	The term of the contract, but no more than five years	Re­gistra­tion of the simplified investment contract
Spare parts	Up to five years, depending on the volume of investment in long-term assets and corre­spo­ndence to the list of priority activities	Registration of the contract
Raw materials and/or materials	Five years	The day the long-term assets are co­mmissio­ned under the work programme
General rule	The term of the contract, but no more than five years	The day the long-term assets are commissioned

The critical divergence: for equipment the clock runs from registration of the contract, and for raw materials and materials from commissioning of the facility. A project with a long construction phase risks exhausting the equipment exemption before it begins to use the raw-materials one.

The work programme and the first-asset rule

The work programme is an annex to the simplified investment contract setting the calendar schedule of works to implement the investment project up to commissioning of the production facility.

Where the work programme provides for the commissioning of two or more long-term assets, the exemption period is counted from the day the first long-term asset is commissioned.

That rule changes the logic of phasing. Commissioning a small ancillary facility first starts the five-year clock for the whole project, including lines that will only come on stream in year four.

The separate sugar carve-out

From 1 January 2020 white sugar (EAEU CN FEA code 170199) is not exempt from import customs duty. The reservation sits in the list of priority activities approved by Government Resolution No. 13 and applies regardless of whether the project satisfies every other condition.

What the exemption does not include

There is no exemption from value added tax on the import of raw materials and materials under an investment contract for new contracts. The corresponding rule survives only as a transitional provision in article 839 of the Tax Code for contracts concluded before 1 January 2026. This is examined in the section on what disappeared in 2026.

Tax preferences under an investment agreement: article 736 of the Tax Code

An investment agreement carries three tax preferences: a 100 per cent reduction of assessed corporate income tax, a coefficient of 0 applied to land tax rates, and property tax at a rate of 0 per cent. The basis is article 736(2) of the Tax Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 214-VIII, in force from 1 January 2026.

The exact wording of the CIT relief

Article 736(2)(1): a reduction of corporate income tax assessed under article 345 of this Code by 100 per cent on income received from implementing the investment project in priority activities, through the exploitation of commissioned fixed assets.

Three limiters sit inside that single sentence.

First, this is a reduction of assessed tax, not an exclusion from the charge. The return is filed, the tax is computed, and only then reduced. The obligations to keep records and to report survive intact.

Second, the relief attaches to income from implementing the investment project in priority activities. The company’s other income — interest, foreign exchange, non-core sales — falls outside the reduction.

Third, the income must be earned through the exploitation of commissioned fixed assets. Income earned before the facility is commissioned is not relieved by this provision.

The two conditions

Article 736(1) requires two conditions to be met at once: a concluded investment agreement, and activity within the priority types determined by the Government. Neither substitutes for the other.

Land tax and property tax

A coefficient of 0 applies to land tax rates on land plots used to implement the investment project.

Property tax is computed at 0 per cent on assets commissioned for the first time in the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan and used to implement the investment project.

A material reservation in article 736(2): subparagraphs 2) and 3) do not apply where the taxable objects are transferred into use, trust management or lease. Leasing out a relieved asset — even part of a building, even to an affiliate — takes that asset out of the zero rate.

The separate accounting obligation

Article 736(6): the taxpayer must keep separate tax records of taxable objects and/or objects connected with taxation, in order to compute the tax liability of the activity carrying tax preferences separately from other activity.

Separate accounting is not a bookkeeping formality but a condition of keeping the relief. Without it there is no way to demonstrate that the reduction was applied to project income.

The ban on combining reliefs

Article 736(7): a taxpayer applying tax preferences under an investment agreement may not apply other provisions of this Code providing for a reduction of corporate income tax or for reduced rates and coefficients.

That makes the investment agreement mutually exclusive with any other CIT-reduction regime. Before signing, it is worth modelling whether a regime already open to the company is the better outcome. The question is particularly sensitive where the project expects to distribute profit: we covered the mechanics in our piece on dividends and profit repatriation from a Kazakh LLP.

What happens if rates rise

Article 736(8): where tax rates increase, the rates in force at the date the investment agreement was concluded apply. That is stabilisation in its pure form, but it is confined to the three taxes listed and does not extend to tax legislation as a whole.

The maximum periods: ten, eight and three years

Paragraphs (3) and (4) of article 736 of the Tax Code set four different ceilings on the tax preferences: ten years for land tax, eight years for property tax, ten years of CIT relief for new production facilities and three years of CIT relief for expansion and renewal. Each has its own starting point, and all four are counted differently.

Land tax

The coefficient of 0 applies from the first day of the month in which the investment agreement is concluded and ends no later than the tenth consecutive year counted from 1 January of the year following the year of conclusion.

The practical effect is that the months of the year of conclusion are a bonus on top of the ten years — but only for land tax.

Property tax

The 0 per cent rate applies from the first day of the month in which the first asset is recognised in fixed assets and ends no later than the eighth consecutive year counted from 1 January of the year following that recognition.

The starting point here is not conclusion of the agreement but recognition of the first asset in fixed assets. If two years pass between signature and recognition of the first asset, the eight-year period begins later; it is not shortened.

CIT: new production facilities

The 100 per cent CIT reduction applies from 1 January of the year in which the investment agreement is concluded and ends no later than the tenth consecutive year counted from 1 January of the year following the year of conclusion.

CIT: expansion and renewal of existing production facilities

The CIT reduction applies from 1 January of the year following the year in which the last fixed asset under the work programme is commissioned, and ends no later than the third consecutive year.

The gap between ten years and three is the most consequential distinction inside the investment agreement regime.An expansion project receives CIT relief three times shorter than a new-production project, even though the investment threshold for expansion is higher: 5,000,000 MRP against 2,000,000 MRP.

The ceilings in one table

Preference	Application begins	Maximum period	Ceiling counted from
Land tax, coefficient 0	First day of the month of conclusion	10 consecutive years	1 January of the year following conclusion
Property tax, 0 % rate	First day of the month the first asset is recognised in fixed assets	8 consecutive years	1 January of the year following recognition
CIT, new production facilities	1 January of the year of conclusion	10 consecutive years	1 January of the year following conclusion
CIT, expansion and renewal	1 January of the year following commissioning of the last fixed asset	3 consecutive years	The same start date

Why “the last asset” changes the arithmetic

For expansion and renewal the clock is tied to the last fixed asset under the work programme, whereas the customs exemption for raw materials under a simplified contract is tied to the first. The logics are opposite: in one case the state defers the start of the relief until the programme is complete, in the other it starts counting from the earliest event.

The planning consequence is that under an investment agreement, delaying commissioning of the last asset postpones the start of the three-year relief but does not lengthen it. The overall horizon remains bounded by article 736(5) of the Tax Code and article 283-1(7) of the Entrepreneurial Code: the period for applying the preferences is set according to the value of the project and the type of activity by investment category, but for no more than ten years.

The separate rule for phased commissioning

Article 736(4)(3) introduces a third method of calculation — for expansion and renewal where the fixed assets are commissioned in phases. In that case the three-year period runs separately for each fixed asset, from 1 January of the year following the year that asset was commissioned.

The practical effect is that with phased commissioning the clock stops depending on the last asset and starts repeatedly. For a programme of four lines commissioned a year apart, that produces fundamentally different economics from a single commissioning date.

Annulment on early termination

Article 283-4(5) of the Entrepreneurial Code: on early termination of the agreement the tax preferences are annulled.

Article 736(9) of the Tax Code puts it precisely: on early termination of an investment agreement the tax preferences and the stability guarantee are annulled from the date of its conclusion, and the taxpayer must file, no later than thirty calendar days from the date of termination, additional tax reporting for every tax period from the date the agreement was concluded to the date of termination inclusive.

The key contrast with the investment obligations agreement is that there is no relief here for having performed ninety per cent of the obligations. Article 736(9) carries no equivalent of the fourth part of article 737(4) — annulment always runs from the date of conclusion, whatever proportion has been spent.

Stability of tax legislation under article 737: ten years and five carve-outs

Under an investment obligations agreement the taxpayer computes taxes and budget payments in accordance with the tax legislation in force at the date the agreement was concluded, for ten years starting from 1 January of the year in which the agreement was concluded. The basis is article 737(2) of the Tax Code.

This is the only tax preference attaching to an investment obligations agreement: not a rate relief but a freeze of the regime. Article 283-4(2)(2) of the Entrepreneurial Code names it exactly that way — “stability of tax legislation”.

Five payments the stability does not reach

Article 737(3): paragraph 2 does not apply, and the tax is computed under the legislation currently in force, in respect of:

Payment	How it is computed
Value added tax	Under the legislation in force in the current period
Excise	Under the legislation in force in the current period
Payment for negative environmental impact	Under the legislation in force in the current period
Individual income tax	Under the legislation in force in the current period
CIT withheld at source	Under the legislation in force in the current period

Three of the five carve-outs are the most volatile payments in the Kazakh system. The 2026 VAT reform passed the stabilisation guarantee by entirely; the current registration rules and threshold are covered in our piece on VAT in Kazakhstan in 2026.

The carve-out for CIT withheld at source means the stability does not protect payments to non-residents. Royalties, interest and service fees will be taxed under the rules in force at the date of payment; the rates and the withholding mechanics are set out in our piece on withholding tax in Kazakhstan.

The abolished-tax rule

Article 737(5): where a tax or payment is abolished, the taxpayer continues to assess and pay it in accordance with the tax legislation in force at the date the agreement was concluded.

Stability runs in both directions and in that sense is not a one-way benefit. If the state abolishes a tax for everyone, a party to an investment obligations agreement keeps paying it until the ten-year period ends. That is the symmetric price of protection against increases.

Consequences of early termination

Article 737(4): on early termination of an investment obligations agreement the provisions of paragraph 2 are treated as annulled from the date the agreement was concluded.

The taxpayer must file additional tax reporting within thirty calendar days from the date of termination.

Annulment from the date of conclusion means recomputing the whole period, not merely the unexpired part. That is heavier than cessation going forward.

The relief at ninety per cent of obligations

Where, at the date of early termination, not less than ninety per cent of the volume of investment obligations has been financed, the annulment runs from 1 January of the year in which the agreement was terminated rather than from the date of its conclusion.

The ninety per cent threshold is the only rule in chapter 81 that limits the retrospective reach of the sanction. A project stopped at ninety-two per cent loses its future but keeps its past; a project stopped at eighty-nine loses both.

The asymmetry with the investment agreement is complete: article 736(9) provides for the same annulment from the date of conclusion and the same thirty-day reporting, but without the ninety per cent threshold. Structurally identical sanctions, with mitigation available under only one of them.

The name collision: article 283 means different things in two codes

In the Entrepreneurial Code article 283 is titled “Concept and types of investment preferences”; in the Tax Code article 283 is titled “Investment tax preferences”. These are two different institutions carrying the same article number. Conflating them is the most common substantive error in writing about Kazakh investment reliefs.

What the Tax Code’s investment tax preferences are

Paragraph 4 of the relevant chapter of the Tax Code, comprising articles 283, 284 and 285, governs the taxpayer’s right to an accelerated deduction of the cost of preference objects when computing CIT. It is a general regime available without any contract with the state: no application, no decision of an authorised body, no work programme.

The key distinction from chapter 81 is that investment tax preferences are a method of deduction, while investment contracts are an agreement with the state. The first is applied in the return; the second is concluded and registered.

Who may not apply investment tax preferences

Article 283(1) of the Tax Code excludes:

•          participants of the Astana International Financial Centre;

•          participants of Astana Hub;

•          producers and sellers of all types of spirit, alcoholic products and tobacco products;

•          taxpayers applying a special tax regime under Section 16 of the Code — those regimes are surveyed in our piece on Kazakhstan’s special tax regimes.

The exclusion of AIFC and Astana Hub participants exists because both regimes already carry their own CIT exemptions. We examined them in our pieces on Astana Hub in 2026 and on AIFC structures and tax incentives.

The ban on using one asset twice

Article 283(3)(5) and (6) of the Tax Code exclude from the preference objects any assets intended for use, or used, within an investment priority project under an investment contract and within an investment agreement, and any assets used in the priority activities of special economic zone participants.

This is an exclusion by asset rather than by person, and it closes off any attempt to claim both the accelerated deduction and the investment agreement relief on the same equipment. A company may run both regimes at once, but only on different assets and with separate accounting.

The two deduction methods

Article 284 of the Tax Code establishes two methods of applying investment tax preferences: the method of deduction after recognition of the object, and the method of deduction before recognition of the object.

The method is chosen by the taxpayer for each preference object separately and recorded in the tax register. The choice attaches to the object rather than to the company: different objects of the same taxpayer may sit under different methods.

The control period

Article 283(6) of the Tax Code: for the purposes of applying the preferences, the control period is a period of not less than three tax periods following the tax period in which the day of recognition of the preference object falls.

The control period is defined in article 283, not in article 284 — a common citation error.

Grounds for annulment

Article 285(1): investment tax preferences are annulled from the date they began to be applied where, during the control period:

•          the requirements of article 283 of the Code are breached;

•          the taxpayer comes to satisfy one of the conditions in article 283(1), that is, joins the excluded categories;

•          the taxpayer is reorganised by merger, accession, division or spin-off.

Reorganisation as a free-standing ground of annulment is the rule most often forgotten when planning corporate structure. An intra-group accession during the control period unwinds the preferences retrospectively, even where the economics of the project are unchanged.

The two regimes compared

Parameter	Investment tax preferences, Tax Code arts. 283–285	Tax preferences under investment contracts, Tax Code chapter 81
Contract with the state required	No	Yes
Investment threshold	None	From 200,000 MRP to 75,000,000 MRP
Nature of the relief	Accelerated deduction of the cost of the asset	100 % CIT reduction or stability of the regime
Open to AIFC and Astana Hub participants	Excluded	No express prohibition
Control period	Not less than three tax periods	The term of the contract
Ground of annulment	Breach of art. 283, reo­rgani­sation	Early termination of the contract

What disappeared on 1 January 2026

Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 215-VIII of 18 July 2025 excluded seven articles of the investment preferences chapter of the Entrepreneurial Code with effect from 1 January 2026: 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 295-1 and 295-3. Some of the excluded rules were moved into new articles; others were abolished in substance. Telling the two groups apart matters in practice.

Moved rather than abolished

Excluded article	Former content	Where the rule sits now
Article 286	Conditions for granting investment preferences	Articles 283-1, 283-2, 283-3 — separately for each instrument
Article 287	Exemption from customs duties	Article 283-5
Article 288	State in-kind grants	Article 283-3(2)–(5)
Article 289	Stability guarantees on changes in legislation	Article 283-4(2)(2) and article 737 of the Tax Code
Article 290	Tax preferences	Article 283-4 and chapter 81 of the Tax Code

Abolished in substance

Article 295-1, “Conclusion and termination of a special investment contract”, was excluded, and the special investment contract no longer exists in the Code. None of the new articles 283-1 to 283-5 reproduces it: article 283(2) closes the list of instruments at three.

Article 295-3, “Investment obligations agreement”, was excluded, but the agreement itself survives: its conditions now sit in article 283-2 and the procedure for conclusion and termination in article 295-2 in its new redaction. That is a relocation with a change of article title, not the abolition of an institution.

Article 291, “Investment subsidy”, was excluded earlier, by Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 399-VI of 2 January 2021. Investment subsidies have not existed within the Entrepreneurial Code’s investment preferences for several years.

The residual reference to the abolished subsidy

Article 295(6-1) of the Entrepreneurial Code still requires the legal entity, on termination of the contract, to “reimburse in full the amount of the investment subsidy paid under the investment contract”. The rule points to article 291, excluded in 2021.

This is a drafting defect: the repayment obligation survives while the grounds for the grant do not. It has no practical application to new contracts, but it has to be allowed for when working with contracts from earlier years.

The recycled article number trap

Article 295-2 was introduced by Law No. 399-VI in 2021 under the title “Investment agreement”, and was restated by Law No. 215-VIII with effect from 1 January 2026 under the title “Conclusion and termination of an investment obligations agreement”.

A citation to article 295-2 without a redaction date is ambiguous: before 1 January 2026 it meant one agreement, and after that date another. The problem is not theoretical: the 2023 order of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs approving the rules on investment agreements still cites article 295-2(2) in its preamble, that is, the provision in its former redaction.

What disappeared on the tax side

The exemption from value added tax on the import of raw materials and materials under an investment contract exists in Tax Code No. 214-VIII only as a transitional provision in article 839, for contracts concluded before 1 January 2026.

For a contract concluded today under any of the three Entrepreneurial Code instruments there is no exemption from import VAT on raw materials and materials: article 283-5 relieves customs duties only, and chapter 81 of the Tax Code says nothing about VAT at all.

A similar-sounding but different regime: the special investment contract

The special investment contract disappeared from the Entrepreneurial Code — article 295-1 was excluded — but it did not disappear from tax legislation.

Article 479(1)(9) of the Tax Code exempts from value added tax the import of raw materials and/or materials forming part of vehicles and/or agricultural machinery, and their components, placed under the customs procedure of a free warehouse or free customs zone of the “Qyzyljar” special economic zone by a legal entity under a special investment contract concluded with the authorised body for concluding special investment contracts.

This is neither a transitional provision nor part of the Entrepreneurial Code’s investment preferences. The special investment contract is concluded with a different authorised body, within industrial policy, and covers a narrow perimeter: vehicles and agricultural machinery in one specific special economic zone.

The practical conclusion is that “the VAT exemption on imported raw materials is gone” is true of the investment agreement, the investment obligations agreement and the simplified investment contract, and untrue as a general statement about Kazakh tax law. The two regimes need to be told apart at the site-selection stage.

Transitional provisions: what earlier contracts keep

Articles 836, 837, 838 and 839 of Tax Code No. 214-VIII preserve the preferences under investment contracts concluded before 1 January 2026 until those contracts expire. No previously concluded contract was terminated by the reform.

Strategic investment projects

Article 836: under investment contracts concluded before 1 January 2018 for the implementation of strategic investment projects, the preferences are preserved until expiry.

Investment priority projects

Article 837(1) divides them into two groups by the date of the contract.

Date the contract was concluded	What is preserved
Before 1 January 2018	The stability guarantee for tax legislation
From 1 January 2018 to 1 January 2026	Tax preferences and the stability guarantee

The difference is material: contracts in the first group keep only the freeze of the regime, contracts in the second keep both the freeze and the reliefs themselves.

Investment obligations agreements

Article 837(2): under investment obligations agreements concluded with the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan before 1 January 2026, the guarantee of stability of tax legislation is preserved.

Only the stability guarantee survives here — the provision says nothing about tax preferences, which is coherent, since this instrument never carried any.

Investment agreements

Article 838 — a separate article rather than a paragraph of article 837: under investment agreements concluded before 1 January 2026 with the state body authorised by the Government to conclude such agreements, the terms of the agreement are preserved until its expiry as regards taxation terms and the guarantee of stability of tax legislation.

This is the rule for those who entered the regime under the former redaction of article 295-2 of the Entrepreneurial Code between 2021 and 2025. Citing article 837(2) for investment agreements is an error: that paragraph governs the other instrument.

VAT on the import of raw materials

Article 839: the exemption from value added tax on the import of raw materials and/or materials under an investment contract concluded before 1 January 2026 — other than contracts for investment priority and strategic projects — is preserved until that contract expires.

This is the only place in the Tax Code where the raw-materials import exemption is mentioned at all. For contracts concluded from 2026 there is no equivalent.

Chapter 81 has no sunset of its own

Chapter 81 of the Tax Code, “Tax preferences under investment contracts”, contains no provision limiting its own operation in time. By contrast, chapter 82, which governs the Astana Hub regime, carries an express limitation to 1 January 2029.

The practical conclusion is that the investment contract regime has no declared end date while the Astana Hub regime does. That is not a guarantee of permanence — the legislature may amend at will, and did amend this very chapter in June 2026 — but it is a different quality of regulatory horizon when choosing between regimes.

Reading the transitional rules together

The four articles form a complete picture: a contract concluded before 2018 lives under one regime, one concluded between 2018 and 2026 under another, an investment obligations agreement concluded before 2026 under a third, and an investment agreement of the same period under a fourth. The organising principle of the reform is that nothing is applied retroactively, and equally that the old regime cannot be extended by signing a new contract.

Procedure: who decides and within what time

The authorised investment body in the Republic of Kazakhstan is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, acting through its Investment Committee. Article 282 of the Entrepreneurial Code does not name a specific ministry, defining the authorised body by function. The allocation of the powers to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is fixed by the Regulation on the Ministry approved by Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 1118 of 28 October 2004: the Ministry directs the implementation of state policy on attracting investment and has a subordinate agency, the Investment Committee.

The role of the national company

Article 282-2: the national company for attracting investment is determined by a decision of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan. That function is performed by KAZAKH INVEST.

The national company supports the project but is not a party to the investment contract. The parties are the authorised investment body (investment agreement and simplified contract) or the Government (investment obligations agreement).

Who signs with whom

Instrument	Counterparty	Basis
Investment agreement	Authorised investment body	Article 283-1
Investment obligations agreement	The Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan	Article 283-2
Simplified investment contract	Authorised investment body	Article 294

The investment obligations agreement is the only instrument whose counterparty is the Government rather than a ministry. That explains the separate procedure in article 295-2 and the longer approval route.

Deadlines for the simplified contract

Article 293(1): the decision to grant investment preferences is taken within sixty working days from the date the application is registered.

Article 294(2): the contract is prepared for signature within ten working days from the decision.

Article 294(3): the contract is registered within five working days after signature and enters into force on the day of registration.

In total, seventy-five working days from registration of the application to entry into force, assuming no objections.

The investment agreement procedure and its conflict with the Code

The procedure for concluding investment agreements is set by the order of the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs No. 11-1-4/113 of 17 March 2023. The Rules are in force and still being amended — most recently by order No. 11-1-4/328 of 16 June 2026, effective 1 July 2026.

The route under those Rules runs as follows.

•          The applicant approaches the “Task Force” with the application in Annex 1 and a documentary pack in Kazakh and Russian.

•          The Astana International Financial Centre checks the applicant’s legal and financial integrity against open international databases within no more than five working days.

•          The “Task Force” forwards the documentation to the authorised body within seven working days; where the pack is incomplete it requests the missing items within one working day.

•          The authorised body determines the feasibility of the project within no more than ten working days.

•          Then follow the opinion of the Ministry of National Economy, referral to the Republican Budget Commission within five working days, approval of the draft agreement by Government resolution, transmission to the investor within five working days, and signature by the investor within ten working days.

At this point a direct conflict with the Code appears, and it is a material one.

Paragraph 5(1) of the Rules requires the value of the investment project to be not less than 7,500,000 MRP as established by the budget law and in force on 1 January of the relevant financial year. At an MRP of KZT 4,325 that is KZT 32,437,500,000 — the author’s arithmetic.

Article 283-1(1) of the Code has, since 1 January 2026, set entirely different thresholds: from 200,000 to 5,000,000 MRP, with the MRP taken at the date of the application. The Rules, meanwhile, cite article 295-2(1) of the Code — a provision in its former redaction that now governs a different instrument.

The practical conclusion is that, until the Rules are brought into line with the Code, an applicant for an investment agreement faces two incompatible thresholds and two different MRP reference dates. The Code has the higher legal force, but the application still has to be filed on the current Annex 1 form and to run the procedure the Rules describe. This is the case where agreeing a position with the authorised body in advance saves months.

Deadlines for the investment obligations agreement

Article 295-2: the application is filed with the authorised investment body, which within twenty working days prepares a draft Government resolution.

The next stage — passage of the draft resolution through the Government — is not fixed by the Code and follows the general rules of procedure.

Requirements for the application

Article 292(1) requires five documents with an application under a simplified investment contract:

•          a certificate of state registration (re-registration) of the legal entity;

•          a copy of the charter certified by the signature of its head and the entity’s seal — the Code does not require notarisation, and for subjects of private entrepreneurship no seal is required at all;

•          a business plan for the investment project meeting the requirements set by the authorised investment body;

•          documents evidencing the size (value) of the state in-kind grant requested, together with the local executive body’s confirmation that it will be provided;

•          a certificate from the state revenue authority confirming the absence of tax arrears and arrears of mandatory pension contributions, mandatory professional pension contributions, social contributions and contributions for compulsory social medical insurance, issued within five working days before the day the application is filed.

That last document has a five-working-day shelf life of its own, which effectively dictates the order in which the pack is assembled: the certificate is obtained last.

Article 292(1-1) and (2) were excluded by Law No. 215-VIII with effect from 1 January 2026.

The form of application is approved by the authorised investment body under article 285(1). The current form is established by the order of the acting Minister for Investments and Development No. 1281 of 30 December 2015, registered with the Ministry of Justice under No. 12780, as subsequently amended.

The numbering defect in article 293

The footnote under article 293 of the Entrepreneurial Code on the Adilet portal reads: “The heading of article 292 — in the redaction of…”. This is a technical inaccuracy in the note to the article rather than in the rule itself; article 293(1) on the sixty working days operates as set out. When citing the decision deadline, the correct reference is article 293(1), not article 292.

The rules for each instrument

•          Investment agreement: the rules on conclusion, amendment and termination are approved by the authorised investment body (article 283-1(6)); the operative act is the order of the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs No. 11-1-4/113 of 17 March 2023, registered with the Ministry of Justice under No. 32095.

•          Investment obligations agreement: the rules and model form are approved by Government Resolution No. 312 of 17 May 2022.

•          Simplified investment contract: the model contract is approved by Government Resolution No. 13 of 14 January 2016.

The list of priority activities and its drift from the Code

The list of priority activities for the implementation of investment projects is approved by Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 13 of 14 January 2016, “On certain matters of implementing state support for investment”. The same resolution approves the model investment contract and the rules on engaging experts.

How the list is built

The list is a table of codes from the General Classifier of Economic Activities, with columns for section, section name, group, group name, class and class name. A project’s eligibility is determined by its OKED class, not by a narrative description of the project.

As at September 2026 the list consists of two operative parts:

Part	Heading as it stands in the resolution	Approximate number of OKED classes
Part 1	Priority activities for the imple­menta­tion of investment projects, including investment priority projects and special investment projects	about 287
Part 2	Priority activities for the imple­menta­tion of investment priority projects	about 102
Part 3	Excluded by Government Resolution No. 158 of 23 February 2023	—

The class counts come from a machine count of unique four-digit OKED codes in the text of the list and are approximate; the resolution contains no official tally of positions.

What the drift consists of

The headings of both operative parts use terms the Entrepreneurial Code has not used since 1 January 2026: “investment priority project” and “special investment project”.

The new redaction of the chapter knows three instruments — the investment agreement, the investment obligations agreement and the simplified investment contract — and the category of “priority project” does not appear among them.

A second marker of the drift: the preamble to Resolution No. 13 still cites articles 282, 286 and 294 of the Entrepreneurial Code, although article 286 was excluded with effect from 1 January 2026. The preamble stands in the redaction of Government Resolution No. 158 of 23 February 2023.

How to read this in practice

Resolution No. 13 is in force: it has not been repealed and continues to be amended — most recently by resolutions No. 859 of 14 October 2025, No. 615 of 14 July 2026 and No. 635 of 17 July 2026.

The workable approach is that the substance of the list — the OKED codes themselves — applies, while the terminology of the headings falls to be construed through the new redaction of the Code. Article 283-3(1) requires the project to be carried out “in priority activities determined by the Government”, and the Government has approved no other list.

A third marker of the drift is the model contract in the same resolution: it was last amended by Resolution No. 158 of 23 February 2023, three years before the reform. The list has been amended four times since; the model contract not once. Before signature it is worth checking its text against the new redaction of articles 283-3, 283-5 and 294.

The risk is nevertheless not zero. Where a project appears only in Part 2, which is tied to the abolished category of priority projects, the applicability of the list to a simplified contract is better agreed with the authorised body in advance than assumed.

Specific carve-outs inside the list

From 1 January 2020 white sugar under EAEU CN FEA code 170199 is not exempt from import customs duty. The reservation is embedded in the text of the list and operates as a free-standing limitation on the customs preference.

What to check before filing

•          Whether the project’s OKED class appears in Part 1 of the list — the principal route for a simplified investment contract.

•          Whether the OKED code declared on incorporation matches the code under which the project is filed. A mismatch between charter activity and project activity is a standard reason for an application being sent back.

•          Whether the goods fall within one of the list’s targeted exclusions.

Termination, clawback of preferences and dispute resolution

Where an investment contract is terminated by agreement of the parties or early, the legal entity pays the amounts of taxes and customs duties that went unpaid as a result of the preferences granted, and returns the state in-kind grant. The basis is article 295(5) and (6) of the Entrepreneurial Code.

Three forms of adverse outcome

Event	Legal consequence	Provision
Termination by agreement or early termination	Payment of the unpaid taxes and customs duties	Article 295(5)
Return of the in-kind grant	The property in kind, or its initial value	Article 295(6)
Early termination of an investment or investment obligations agreement	Annulment of the tax preferences	Article 283-4(5); Tax Code article 737(4)

The difference between “paying what went unpaid” and “annulment” is material: the first restores the tax base, the second unwinds the very fact that the regime was applied.

The state’s exit from the shareholding

Article 283-1(4): the state and the quasi-public sector must exit the shareholding of the legal entity within five years. Failure suspends the grant of preferences for up to one year, and after that period leads to early termination of the agreement, with the tax relieved becoming payable.

Suspension for up to a year is a window for cure, not an automatic termination. Restructuring the shareholding within that window preserves the agreement.

Unilateral termination

Article 295-2(3): where the obligations and conditions in article 283-2 are not performed, the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan terminates the agreement unilaterally on the expiry of three months from the date notice is sent.

The period runs from despatch of the notice, not from its receipt. Paragraph 2 of the same article also limits the scope for rescuing the agreement by amendment: amendments may be made exclusively to the investment schedule. The subject matter and the volume of the obligations cannot be revisited.

After termination the taxpayer must file additional tax reporting within thirty calendar days. That thirty-day period is the only hard deadline on the taxpayer’s side after termination, and missing it creates a free-standing breach.

Resolving investment disputes

Article 296 sets a sequence: negotiation, then a method of resolution in accordance with a procedure previously agreed by the parties, then the courts of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Arbitration is available by agreement of the parties.

The key point is that an arbitration clause is not implied — it has to be agreed. The model contract approved by Resolution No. 13 sets the baseline drafting, and the question of forum should be settled while the contract is being prepared rather than after a dispute has arisen.

The investment ombudsman

Article 314 of the Entrepreneurial Code, in the redaction of Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 306-VIII of 11 June 2026 in force from 1 July 2026: the investment ombudsman is the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

This is a 2026 change, and it alters the character of the institution. The function previously sat with an executive official; it now sits with the head of the prosecution service. An approach to the ombudsman does not replace judicial protection and does not suspend the running of procedural time limits.

Tax control while the contract runs

Applying preferences does not take a company outside ordinary tax administration. Desk control, audits and appeals against their results follow the general rules covered in our piece on desk control, tax audits and appeals in Kazakhstan.

Separate accounting under article 736(6) of the Tax Code is the first thing examined when the legitimacy of a CIT reduction is tested.

The three instruments in one table: choosing for a specific project

The choice between the investment agreement, the investment obligations agreement and the simplified investment contract turns on four parameters: the size of the investment, whether the company has a revenue history, whether it needs to import equipment, and whether it needs CIT relief or merely predictability.

Side-by-side comparison

Parameter	Investment agreement	Investment obligations agreement	Simplified investment contract
Counterparty	Authorised investment body	Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan	Authorised investment body
Minimum investment	From 200,000 to 5,000,000 MRP depending on project type	75,000,000 MRP over 8 years	No threshold set by the Code
100 % CIT reduction	Yes	No	No
Land tax, coefficient 0	Yes	No	No
Property tax, 0 % rate	Yes	No	No
Stability of tax legislation	Stability of the coefficient, rates and size of the reduction	Full, 10 years, with 5 carve-outs	No
State in-kind grant	Yes, art. 283-1(7)(2)	No	Yes, up to 30 % of investment
Right to engage foreign labour	Yes, art. 283-1(7)(3)	No	No
Exemption from customs duties	No	No	Yes, up to 5 years
Revenue history required	No	Yes, the 70 % test for the preceding year	No
Business-size restriction	None	Large or medium business only	None
Maximum period of the preferences	No more than 10 years, art. 283-1(7) and Tax Code art. 736(5)	Stability runs 10 years	Reliefs up to 5 years
Closed list of project types	Yes, five types	No, but the goo­ds-pro­ducer test applies	Through the list of priority activities

The thresholds in tenge

Every threshold in the Code is expressed in MRP. At an MRP of KZT 4,325, set by article 7 of the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On the republican budget for 2026–2028” with effect from 1 January 2026, they translate as follows.

Threshold in MRP	Amount in KZT	Where it applies
200,000	865,000,000	Tourist facilities on priority tourist territories
1,000,000	4,325,000,000	Food and light industry; hotels
2,000,000	8,650,000,000	Creation of new production facilities
5,000,000	21,625,000,000	Expansion and renewal of existing production facilities
75,000,000	324,375,000,000	Investment obligations agreement; and the tax preference condition under it

The conversion into tenge is the author’s arithmetic; the legislative texts express the amounts only in MRP. When the MRP changes under the budget law for the next period, the tenge value of the thresholds changes with it.

How the parameters resolve into a decision

A project with heavy equipment imports and no need for CIT relief. The simplified investment contract: it carries the only available exemption from customs duties, and not a tenge of tax relief.

A new-production project above KZT 8,650,000,000 expecting profit in its early years. The investment agreement: ten years of a 100 per cent CIT reduction, zero land and property tax, plus the in-kind grant and the right to engage foreign labour.

An operating producer with a revenue history whose priority is predictability. The investment obligations agreement: no rate reliefs, but tax legislation frozen for ten years.

The single-choice rule: under article 283(3-1) investment preferences are granted exclusively under one of the three instruments. The customs preference of a simplified contract cannot be combined with the CIT reduction of an investment agreement — and this is the one fork that cannot be taken twice.

Step by step: from project concept to a contract in force

The route to investment preferences runs to ten steps, the first four of which are taken before filing and determine the outcome.

Step 1. Check the legal form

Preferences are granted to a legal entity of the Republic of Kazakhstan, including one with foreign participation, incorporated in the manner established by Kazakh legislation. A branch or representative office of a foreign company cannot be the applicant. The practical mechanics of incorporation are covered in our piece on registering a Kazakh LLP for foreigners.

Step 2. Choose the instrument

Pick one of the three: investment agreement, investment obligations agreement, simplified investment contract. The rule in article 283(3-1) does not permit preferences under more than one.

Step 3. Check the activity

Find the project’s OKED class in the list of priority activities approved by Government Resolution No. 13 of 14 January 2016. Separately check whether the activity falls into the excluded list in article 283-1(5).

Step 4. Compute the threshold in tenge

Take the current MRP and multiply by the threshold value, keeping the date difference in mind: article 283-1 uses the MRP at the date of application, article 283-2 the MRP at 1 January of the year of application.

Step 5. Prepare the work programme

The work programme is an annex to the contract setting the calendar schedule of works up to commissioning of the production facility. It fixes the starting points of the time limits: commissioning of the first asset starts the customs clock for raw materials, and commissioning of the last starts the three-year CIT clock for expansion projects.

Step 6. Assemble the application documents

For a simplified contract, article 292(1) requires five documents: the certificate of state registration, a copy of the charter certified by the head’s signature and seal, a business plan, the documents on the in-kind grant together with the local executive body’s confirmation, and a tax-clearance certificate with a five-working-day shelf life.

Step 7. File and await the decision

The decision is taken within sixty working days from the date the application is registered.

Step 8. Sign and register the contract

The contract is prepared for signature within ten working days of the decision and registered within five working days of signature. It enters into force on the day of registration, and every ceiling tied to registration runs from that date.

Step 9. Build separate accounting

Article 736(6) of the Tax Code requires separate tax records for relieved and other activity. The accounting policy is best aligned before the first tax period in which preferences are applied, not after.

Step 10. Observe the restrictions throughout the term

•          Do not transfer relieved assets into use, trust management or lease — that removes them from the zero land and property tax rates.

•          Do not apply other CIT-reduction mechanisms in parallel — article 736(7) expressly prohibits it.

•          Ensure the state and quasi-public sector exit the shareholding within five years, where they are present.

•          Keep to the work programme schedule — deviations are grounds for early termination.

Indicative calendar

Stage	Time	Cumulative
Review of the application	60 working days	60 working days
Preparation of the contract for signature	10 working days	70 working days
Registration of the contract	5 working days	75 working days

The calendar applies to the simplified investment contract. For an investment obligations agreement the passage of the draft resolution through the Government is added, and the Code sets no time limit for that stage.

Common mistakes and what they cost

Mistake 1. Believing state in-kind grants were abolished

Article 288 of the Entrepreneurial Code was excluded with effect from 1 January 2026, but the in-kind grant regime was moved wholesale into article 283-3(2)–(5), and the grant itself remains in the preference lists of two instruments — the simplified contract and the investment agreement. The abolition conclusion comes from reading the list of excluded articles without checking the new ones.

The cost: forgoing a grant of up to thirty per cent of investment in long-term assets. On a KZT 5,000,000,000 project that is up to KZT 1,500,000,000 of property received free of charge.

Mistake 2. Counting on VAT exemption for imported raw materials

The exemption survives only for contracts concluded before 1 January 2026, by force of article 839 of the Tax Code. None of the three Entrepreneurial Code instruments carries it; the separate exemption in article 479(1)(9) of the Tax Code belongs to the special investment contract in the “Qyzyljar” special economic zone and does not extend to them.

The cost: 12 per cent of the value of imported raw materials, absent from the financial model. For a project importing KZT 2,000,000,000 of raw materials a year, that is KZT 240,000,000 a year of unplanned working-capital tax.

Mistake 3. Expecting CIT relief from a simplified contract

Article 294(1) states expressly that the simplified contract provides investment preferences “other than tax preferences”.

The cost: choosing an instrument that gives five years of customs relief instead of one that gives ten years of zero CIT. For a profitable production business the difference is an order of magnitude.

Mistake 4. Leasing out a relieved asset

Article 736(2) of the Tax Code: the zero land tax and property tax rates do not apply where the taxable objects are transferred into use, trust management or lease.

The cost: restoration of property tax and land tax on the leased asset for the whole period of the transfer. The rule carries no materiality threshold: leasing out part of a building takes the relevant asset out of the relief.

Mistake 5. Applying other CIT-reduction mechanisms in parallel

Article 736(7) prohibits a taxpayer applying investment agreement preferences from applying other provisions of the Code on CIT reduction, reduced rates and coefficients.

The cost: additional CIT assessed for every period in which both mechanisms were applied, plus late-payment interest.

Mistake 6. Confusing the periods for new production and for expansion

For new production facilities the CIT reduction runs for up to ten years; for expansion and renewal for up to three, and the count begins only on 1 January of the year following commissioning of the last fixed asset — or, where commissioning is phased under article 736(4)(3), separately for each asset.

The cost: a financial model built on a ten-year relief where the law gives three.

Mistake 7. Failing the goods-producer test

The investment obligations agreement requires that not less than seventy per cent of aggregate annual income for the preceding year came from the sale of goods of the entity’s own production. A company incorporated for the project cannot pass it.

The cost: months of application preparation for a filing that will be rejected on formal grounds.

Mistake 8. Leaving the state in the shareholding

Article 283-1(4) requires the state and the quasi-public sector to exit within five years. Failure suspends the preferences for up to a year and then leads to early termination of the agreement.

The cost: annulment of the tax preferences and repayment of the tax relieved over the entire period. The mechanics of moving participatory interests and the related tax consequences are covered in our piece on dividends and profit repatriation from a Kazakh LLP.

Mistake 9. Working to the threshold in the operative Rules instead of the Code

Paragraph 5 of the Rules on concluding investment agreements (order No. 11-1-4/113) still requires a project value of not less than 7,500,000 MRP — KZT 32,437,500,000 — whereas article 283-1(1) of the Code has required between 200,000 and 5,000,000 MRP since 2026.

The cost runs both ways: a KZT 9,000,000,000 project that satisfies the Code may be turned back at the procedural level, while a project measured against the Rules is deferred for no reason. The position on the applicable threshold should be agreed with the authorised body before the application is filed.

Mistake 10. Reorganising the company during the control period

Article 285(1) of the Tax Code: investment tax preferences are annulled from the date they began to be applied where, during the control period, the taxpayer is reorganised by merger, accession, division or spin-off.

The cost: the accelerated deduction unwound retrospectively in full, even where the reorganisation was intra-group and economically neutral.

Who the regime suits, who it does not, and when professional review is needed

Who it suits

•          Production projects with capital expenditure above KZT 8,650,000,000 expecting profit in the years immediately after launch — the investment agreement.

•          Projects with substantial imports of technological equipment, including under a finance lease — the simplified investment contract.

•          Operating goods producers in large and medium business with a long investment programme and a priority on predictability — the investment obligations agreement.

•          Food and light industry projects, where the entry threshold falls to 1,000,000 MRP.

•          Hotel and tourism projects outside the capital and cities of republican significance that meet the star-rating and international-chain requirements.

Who it does not suit

•          Companies whose activity falls into the excluded list in article 283-1(5): subsoil use, digital mining, turnover of digital financial assets, trading in minerals, security activity and others.

•          Branches and representative offices of foreign companies — preferences go only to legal entities of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

•          Companies on special tax regimes — an express exclusion for the investment obligations agreement.

•          Producers of excisable goods — again for the investment obligations agreement.

•          AIFC and Astana Hub participants — for the investment tax preferences in articles 283–285 of the Tax Code.

•          Projects whose economics depend on VAT exemption for imported raw materials — none of the three instruments carries that relief.

When professional review is needed

•          Where the project appears only in Part 2 of the list of priority activities, which is tied to the abolished category of priority projects.

•          Where the state or the quasi-public sector sits in the shareholding and the five-year exit has to be planned.

•          Where a reorganisation is contemplated during the period in which preferences are applied.

•          Where part of the project’s floor space is to be leased out.

•          Where a contract concluded before 1 January 2026 is running and the applicable transitional provisions have to be identified.

•          Where the project is being filed for an investment agreement: the operative Rules require 7,500,000 MRP while the Code requires between 200,000 and 5,000,000, and the position must be agreed before filing.

If you are still designing the structure for a Kazakh project, start with the form of presence: we set out the options on the UPPERSETUP Kazakhstan page.

Frequently asked questions

What investment preferences apply in Kazakhstan in 2026?

Three instruments apply: the investment agreement, the investment obligations agreement and the simplified investment contract. The list is closed by article 283(2) of the Entrepreneurial Code.

Can a 100 per cent CIT exemption be obtained?

Under an investment agreement, yes — though in law it is a reduction of assessed tax rather than an exemption. Article 736(2)(1) of the Tax Code provides for a reduction of assessed corporate income tax by 100 per cent on income from implementing the investment project.

Were state in-kind grants abolished in 2026?

No. Article 288 of the Entrepreneurial Code was excluded, but the grant regime was moved in full into article 283-3(2)–(5), including the cap of thirty per cent of investment in long-term assets. The grant is available under both the simplified investment contract and the investment agreement.

What is the minimum investment for an investment agreement?

From 200,000 MRP for tourist facilities on priority territories to 5,000,000 MRP for expansion and renewal of existing production facilities. At an MRP of KZT 4,325 that is KZT 865,000,000 to KZT 21,625,000,000.

Does a simplified investment contract carry tax reliefs?

No. Article 294(1) expressly excludes tax preferences. The simplified contract carries only the state in-kind grant and exemption from customs duties — but it is the only instrument with the customs relief.

For how many years is the customs duty exemption granted?

For equipment and components, the term of the contract but no more than five years from registration of the contract. For raw materials and materials, five years from commissioning of the long-term assets.

Does the VAT exemption on imported raw materials survive?

Only for contracts concluded before 1 January 2026, by force of article 839 of the Tax Code. Neither the investment agreement, nor the investment obligations agreement, nor the simplified contract carries it; the separate exemption in article 479(1)(9) belongs to the special investment contract in the “Qyzyljar” zone.

Can several investment preferences be combined?

No. Article 283(3-1) of the Entrepreneurial Code allows preferences to be granted exclusively under one of the three instruments.

What is an investment obligations agreement and how does it differ from an investment agreement?

It is a contract with the Government requiring financing of not less than 75,000,000 MRP over eight years. It carries not a rate relief but stability of tax legislation for ten years.

Which taxes are not protected by the stability guarantee?

Five: value added tax, excise, the payment for negative environmental impact, individual income tax and CIT withheld at source.

How long does an application for investment preferences take?

The decision is taken within sixty working days from the date the application is registered — article 293(1) of the Entrepreneurial Code.

Who signs the investment contract on behalf of the state?

The investment agreement and the simplified investment contract are signed by the authorised investment body, that is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through its Investment Committee. The investment obligations agreement is signed by the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Can a foreign company obtain investment preferences in Kazakhstan?

Not directly. Preferences are granted to a legal entity of the Republic of Kazakhstan, including one with foreign participation, incorporated under Kazakh law.

Which threshold applies to an investment agreement — the Code’s or the Rules’?

The Code has the higher legal force and has, since 1 January 2026, set thresholds of 200,000 to 5,000,000 MRP. The operative Rules under order No. 11-1-4/113 retain the former 7,500,000 MRP threshold, so the position should be agreed with the authorised body before filing.

What happens to the preferences if the contract is terminated early?

The tax preferences are annulled, the taxes and customs duties left unpaid as a result of the reliefs become payable, and the in-kind grant or its initial value is returned.

Key takeaways

1.        From 1 January 2026 the investment preferences chapter operates in its new redaction, introduced by Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 215-VIII of 18 July 2025.

2.        There are exactly three instruments, and preferences are granted under one of them only.

3.        The 100 per cent CIT reduction is available under the investment agreement alone.

4.        Exemption from customs duties is available under the simplified investment contract alone.

5.        State in-kind grants were not abolished — they moved into article 283-3, capped at thirty per cent, and are available under two of the three instruments.

6.        The special investment contract is gone: article 295-1 was excluded.

7.        For investment contracts the VAT exemption on imported raw materials survives only as a transitional provision in article 839 of the Tax Code; the live rule in article 479(1)(9) belongs to a different regime.

8.        The ceilings differ: ten years of CIT relief for new production facilities, three for expansion, ten years for land tax and eight for property tax.

9.        The stability of tax legislation under an investment obligations agreement does not reach five taxes and operates in both directions.

10.    Article 283 means different institutions in the Entrepreneurial Code and in the Tax Code; article 295-2 means different agreements before and after 1 January 2026.

11.    The subordinate layer has fallen behind the Code: the priority-activities list and the model contract use abolished terms, and the Rules on investment agreements still carry a 7,500,000 MRP threshold.

12.    From 1 July 2026 the investment ombudsman is the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Summary

Investment preferences in Kazakhstan have since 1 January 2026 been governed by the relevant chapter of the Entrepreneurial Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 375-V, in the redaction of Law No. 215-VIII of 18 July 2025, and by chapter 81 of the Tax Code No. 214-VIII. Three instruments exist: the investment agreement (article 283-1), the investment obligations agreement (article 283-2) and the simplified investment contract (article 283-3), and preferences are granted under one of them only. The investment agreement carries a 100 per cent reduction of corporate income tax, a coefficient of 0 on land tax rates and property tax at 0 per cent, at thresholds from 200,000 to 5,000,000 MRP. The investment obligations agreement requires financing of not less than 75,000,000 MRP over eight years and carries stability of tax legislation for ten years with five carve-outs. The simplified investment contract carries a state in-kind grant of up to thirty per cent of investment in long-term assets and exemption from customs duties for up to five years, but no tax preferences. The investment agreement carries, besides the tax preferences, a state in-kind grant and the right to engage foreign labour. The MRP for 2026 is KZT 4,325. An application is decided within sixty working days. The authorised investment body is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan, acting through its Investment Committee.

Sources

1.        Entrepreneurial Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 375-V of 29 October 2015 — Adilet legal information system

2.        Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On taxes and other obligatory payments to the budget (Tax Code)” No. 214-VIII of 18 July 2025 — Adilet legal information system

3.        Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 215-VIII of 18 July 2025 “On amendments and additions to certain legislative acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on taxation matters” — Adilet legal information system

4.        Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 324-VIII of 24 June 2026 on the development of machine building and transport — Adilet legal information system

5.        Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 306-VIII of 11 June 2026 — Adilet legal information system

6.        Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 399-VI of 2 January 2021 — Adilet legal information system

7.        Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On the republican budget for 2026–2028” — Adilet legal information system

8.        Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 13 of 14 January 2016 “On certain matters of implementing state support for investment” — Adilet legal information system

9.        Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 312 of 17 May 2022 approving the rules on the investment obligations agreement — Adilet legal information system

10.    Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 158 of 23 February 2023 amending Resolution No. 13 — Adilet legal information system

11.    Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 1118 of 28 October 2004 “Matters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan” — Adilet legal information system

12.    Order of the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 11-1-4/113 of 17 March 2023 approving the rules on concluding, amending and terminating investment agreements, MoJ No. 32095 — Adilet legal information system

13.    Order of the acting Minister for Investments and Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 1281 of 30 December 2015 approving the rules on receiving, registering and considering the application for investment preferences, MoJ No. 12780 — Adilet legal information system

Disclaimer

This material is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, financial, investment or consulting advice. Before taking any decision you should obtain individual professional advice that accounts for your specific circumstances, jurisdiction, company status and the current requirements of the regulators.

Publication date: September 2026.