In Kazakhstan, after several years of growth, the number of individual entrepreneurs has noticeably decreased, reports infohub.kz.

According to the monitoring agency EnergyProm, as of August 1, 2026, there were nearly 1.6 million active individual entrepreneurs in the country, compared to almost 1.8 million a year earlier. Thus, the figure decreased by 10.5% over the year. The number of registered individual entrepreneurs fell by 11.4%.

However, this decline does not mean that all those who disappeared from the statistics ceased their activities. Since January 1, 2026, a special tax regime for the self-employed has been in effect, allowing certain conditions to work without registering as an individual entrepreneur. Therefore, some entrepreneurs may have disappeared from the statistics of individual entrepreneurs while continuing to work in a different status. The Bureau of National Statistics of the Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms of the Republic of Kazakhstan directly links the reduction in the number of individual entrepreneurs to the transition to the new regime.

The new regime quickly became widespread. Since the beginning of the year, 689,000 people have registered under the special tax regime for the self-employed, 87% of whom worked through digital platforms. At the same time, 84,000 self-employed individuals were previously individual entrepreneurs, while 546,000 had not been registered as entrepreneurs before.

The most noticeable decrease over the year was in the number of individual entrepreneurs in the transport and warehousing sector: from 159,000 to 91,000. This dynamics may be related to the transition of some workers to the self-employed category: taxi and courier services are available under the new special tax regime. However, it cannot be argued that all transport individual entrepreneurs who disappeared from the statistics switched to the new regime.

Another 53,000 decrease was in the number of active individual entrepreneurs in the sector of other services. This group includes, in particular, hairdressers and beauty salons, laundries, dry cleaners, and other entrepreneurs providing household services, some of whom also have access to the regime for the self-employed.