The development of the stock market has shown positive results

Since the beginning of the year, the total capitalization of the KASE stock market has increased to 52% of GDP (for 2020 - 49% of GDP). This was reported by Madina Abylkasymova, the Chairperson of the Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Regulation and Development of Financial Market on the results of the Agency for the first 5 months of 2021.

The capitalization of the stock market has increased by 12.6% since the beginning of this year to 21.5 trillion tenge due to an increase in the value of shares of corporate issuers. Since the beginning of this year, the volume of private bonds in circulation has decreased by 0.7% to 14.6 trillion tenge due to the repayment of corporate debt issues that have expired.

As of May 1, 2021, there were 137 shares and 269 bond issues on the official list of the stock exchange. The official list includes 2 new issues of shares and 20 new issues of bonds.

For the development of the stock market, the Agency is working to strengthen the role of institutional and retail investors. In this regard, the conditions for remote conclusion of brokerage contracts through biometric identification using mobile applications of brokers have been expanded, and banks have also been granted the right to provide a full range of brokerage services to their clients. As a result of the regulatory measures taken, the number of investors in the securities market increased by 21%, and the total number of investors reached 166 thousand.

In this regard, in order to attract retail investors to the securities market, the Agency is working to strengthen the protection of investors ' rights from fraudulent actions of unscrupulous intermediaries. To do this, the Agency proposed at the legislative level to include in the perimeter of regulation of entities providing services in the Forex market, to introduce financial liability of brokers and managers (investment advisors) for providing incorrect investment recommendations to their clients, which led to losses. A block of relevant legislative amendments has been submitted to the Mazhilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan for discussion.

At the system level, in order to prevent unfair behavior and market abuses, the Agency will continue to monitor suspicious transactions, strengthen the analysis of speculative transactions to prevent their negative impact on market pricing, demand, or supply of assets on the exchange market.

The consequences of the pandemic, quarantine restrictions, and the downturn in business activity have limited the access of entrepreneurs to finance, in this regard, one of the Agency's tasks is to increase the role of the stock market as an alternative channel for funding the economy. For this purpose, the Agency has identified key challenges that hinder the development of the stock market, for which the Agency is working on additional systemic measures aimed at resuming the privatization of national companies in the format of "People's IPO", the introduction of new types of financial instruments, the development of a national corporate governance Code for Kazakhstani companies by the end of 2021, the introduction of incentives for private companies to raise capital through the mechanisms of the stock market.