Industrial production contracted by 4.8 percent in Kazakhstan in the first four months of the year compared with growth of 3.5 percent in the same period of last year, the state statistics agency said on Friday. Kazakhstan is a significant oil and metals producer.
It has been hit hard by the global crisis and some analysts expect the economy to contract this year after more than a decade of growth. Oil production grew 4.4 percent in January-April to 20.3 million tonnes while copper output shrank 9.3 percent to 106,848 tonnes and zinc production declined by 7.3 percent to 112,359 tonnes in the same period, the agency said.
Following the global trend, a number of Kazakh metals companies have reduced output in response to sagging demand. Condensate output decreased by 6.6 percent to 4.1 million tonnes, the agency said, and natural gas output grew 4.2 percent to 11.7 billion cubic metres.
Alumina output grew 2.1 percent to 566.374 tonnes, gold production jumped 20.5 percent to 3.228 tonnes, silver output increased 1.5 percent to 219.3 tonnes. Declining commodity prices caused Kazakhstan's trade surplus to shrink to $2 billion in the first quarter from $8.7 billion in the same period of 2008 as exports nearly halved to $8 billion.
Comments
Comments are closed.