Photo: Radis B / Pexels
In the first half of 2026, net foreign direct investment (FDI) in Kazakhstan, excluding reinvested earnings, totaled $501.6 million. The figure remains positive, but reinvested earnings of foreign investors no longer make a positive contribution (inbusiness.kz, citing finprom.kz).
What happened to capital inflows
Reinvested earnings are the income of foreign investors that is not paid out as dividends and leaves the country, but stays in companies and goes toward growing the business. Over the past decade, they accounted for a significant share of positive FDI dynamics and made up for weak results in other components.
This was especially visible from 2018 to 2023. Apart from the first half of 2020, net FDI excluding reinvestment for the first six months of each year stayed negative.
In the first half of 2024, the picture changed: for the first time in the period under review, this indicator turned positive, reaching $647.1 million. In 2026 it fell to $501.6 million compared with 2024. It is still in the black, but the pace has slowed.
What this means
Previously, a significant part of the recorded inflow came not from new investment in the capital of Kazakhstani companies, but from the profits of foreign-owned companies that operated in the country and put their earnings back into the business.
Reinvested earnings no longer make a positive contribution.
At the same time, net FDI excluding reinvestment remains positive. This means the statistics still reflect foreign investors’ money going into projects in Kazakhstan.
Put simply
The structure of the inflow has shifted: where the positive total once rested on reinvestment, it is now the figure without it that stays in the black. One detail matters for comparison: this kind of plus was first recorded in the first half of 2024.
