In Kazakhstan, the number of citizens who regularly make pension contributions is increasing. Over the past year, the number of accounts with at least one contribution has grown by 150,000, reports infohub.kz.
Mandatory pension contributions are deducted from the salaries of all officially employed citizens in Kazakhstan. Self-employed individuals make these payments on their own. However, only half of the working population contributes regularly, but the situation is gradually improving.
According to the Unified Accumulative Pension Fund (UAPF), in the first half of 2026, the number of individual pension accounts with at least one contribution during the year increased by 150,300 to 7.34 million. At the same time, the volume of pension savings grew by nearly 1.29 trillion tenge (6.2%) to 22.24 trillion tenge.
The fund notes that the majority of active accounts belong to citizens who are employed and regularly pay mandatory pension contributions (MPC). Their number increased from 6.77 million to 6.93 million over six months, and their savings grew from 20.10 trillion to 21.07 trillion tenge.
Payment discipline is also improving. In 2025, the average frequency of contributions was 8.98 per year for employees and 7.53 for the self-employed. Between 6 and 12 contributions per year were made by 80% of employees and 64% of the self-employed.
The contribution structure has also improved. The average contribution in 2025 was 43,661 tenge for employees, which corresponds to the average salary in the country at that time. For other workers, the average contribution was 23,225 tenge.
Overall, the fund notes that from 2015 to 2025, the number of active accounts grew from 6.07 million to over 7.2 million; the share of citizens making pension contributions 6 to 12 times a year increased from 71% to 78%; and the share of contributors making irregular payments (1 to 5 times a year) decreased from 29% to 22%.
It is important to note that the statistics include accounts of pensioners, persons with permanent disabilities of groups 1 and 2, military personnel receiving state pension benefits, citizens who have moved abroad permanently, deceased contributors, and other categories for which contributions are no longer made.
Earlier it was also reported that Kazakhs are more often getting officially employed, during which employers pay pension contributions. However, many employers still register their employees with minimum salaries and prefer to pay them "in envelopes." You can read about how many employers went into the "gray" zone due to the new Tax Code in Kazakhstan here.