Official communications from the National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan have become increasingly difficult to understand over the years: to grasp the regulator's press releases on the base rate, a reader needs the level of a university student or graduate. These are the findings of researchers at the Applied Economics Research Centre (AERC) in their report "Features of Kazakhstan's Monetary Policy," according to infohub.kz.

AERC analyzed the evolution of the regulator's communication strategy, drawing on research by a National Bank employee (Meirmanova, 2024). The data show that the wording in official documents has grown steadily more complex.

The Flesch readability score for base rate press releases fell from 41.5 in 2019 to 36.4 in 2023. This means the texts have become harder to comprehend. The Flesch-Kincaid grade level also rose from 12.8 to 13.6–14.1. On this scale, understanding the regulator's statements requires 13–14 years of education.

The experts offer a vivid comparison borrowed from calculations by J. Fulwood, an employee of the Bank of England: understanding most media articles and literary works by great writers requires no more than 10 years of education; understanding a speech by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman explaining Heisenberg's uncertainty principle requires only 8 years of education; while understanding central bank texts requires 14 years of education.

Analysts note that because the National Bank's reports have become more complex, they are harder for a broad audience to understand, and the influence of the regulator's statements on citizens' inflation expectations has diminished.

At the same time, AERC analysts record major institutional progress by the National Bank since the transition to inflation targeting in 2015. Before that, public information was limited to rare press releases and comments on the tenge exchange rate.

Thus, in recent years the National Bank introduced regular press releases justifying base rate decisions and began publishing a Monetary Policy Report, launched social media accounts, updated its website, and started organizing briefings and interviews with management.

In addition, in 2020–2022 the regulator introduced elements of forward guidance, signaling to the market the likely path of interest rates.

Also, starting in 2025, the National Bank began publishing summaries of Monetary Policy Committee discussions, disclosing the rationale behind decisions.

Banks and large companies have learned to read these signals, factoring them into lending and deposit rates, AERC notes. However, the channel of communication with ordinary citizens remains underdeveloped. The National Bank focuses on professional financial market participants, while the general public ignores lengthy analytical articles and reports.

Because official reports are understandable only to experts, and the media landscape is saturated with discussion of tenge exchange rate fluctuations, the population's inflation expectations remain elevated — 3–4 percentage points above actual inflation.

In its Monetary Policy Strategy through 2030, the National Bank promised to further increase transparency and more actively explain the rationale for its decisions. AERC experts emphasize: to contain price growth, the regulator needs to abandon complex sentences and move toward more direct and understandable communication with the public, using short formats and infographics.