The chemical industry is one of the leading branches of heavy industry, it is the scientific, technical and material basis for the chemicalization of the national economy and plays an extremely important role in the development of productive forces, strengthening the defense capability of the state and in ensuring the vital needs of society.
The products of this industry are widely used for the manufacture of various consumer products, and if we take large volumes, the products of the chemical complex are used in other areas of the national economy:
* oil industries;
* mining;
* construction;
* agriculture;
* pharmaceuticals;
* textile production, etc.
The chemical industry itself uses about 25% of its own products. This industry knows no waste. Moreover, it often uses the waste of any production itself, and produces new effective materials with predetermined properties for industry and goods to the public.
There is a rich raw material base for the development of the chemical industry in the republic: phosphorites, sulfur pyrite, barite, bromine, table and potash salts, sodium sulfate, waste from oil refining and coke chemistry, sulfur dioxide from non-ferrous metallurgy enterprises. Some wild plants are also of considerable value for chemistry: citrus wormwood on the western slopes of the Karatau mountains, ephedra, licorice in the west of Kazakhstan.
In the republic, 73 enterprises are engaged in the production of plastics, chemical fibers, tires, calcium carbide, caustic soda. Kazakhstan has a large enterprise for processing ore of unique yellow phosphorus, because it has the richest reserves of phosphorus-containing raw materials based on the deposits of the Karatau basin and is one of the five countries in the world that own 90 percent of the world's phosphorus reserves. The phosphorous industry of Kazakhstan provides 34.1% of the chemical industry of the republic (excluding petrochemical products) and the task of increasing the production of phosphorous and phosphorus-containing products is considered one of the key ones for the economy of the republic.
The top most exported products of the chemical industry included: yellow phosphorus, chromium oxides and chlorides, herbicides, chromium trioxide, ammonium nitrate, sodium dichromate, mineral fertilizers. Without a highly developed chemical industry, it is impossible to develop agriculture at the proper level, which receives mineral fertilizers and pesticides from it.
The mining and chemical industry and basic chemistry related to the extraction of fossil chemical raw materials are very developed in the republic.
In total, there were 493 deposits on the territory of the country today, where more than 1200 varieties of mineral raw materials are extracted.