Despite some progress, the Central Asian country has fallen well short of its ambitious production targets, and while government has pledged more support to get the industry on track, state policy remains inconsistent and resources are limited.
The industry’s production performance has doubled since the Kazakh government embarked on a journey to expand the country’s aquaculture in 2020. In 2022, farmers manufactured 13,200 tonnes of fish and seafood – the highest figure in its post-Soviet history. But while these are positive developments, a number of complicated underlying issues remain.
Under the state development plan, Kazakh aquaculture production is aiming to reach 270,000 tonnes per year by 2030. In addition, to this, Kazakhstan is looking to become a net exporter of fish, with the plan to deliver some 300,000 tonnes of products to neighbouring country markets, and for aquaculture to account for the lion’s share of that volume.
However, when the programme was made public, local players said the goals were “unrealistic”. They cited numerous systemic problems, like a lack of necessary infrastructure, low per capita fish consumption, and the administrative barriers that have been discouraging potential investors.
The government’s production plan envisaged 2022’s output near quadrupling to reach 22,700 tonnes, and to achieve this, in recent years, numerous ponds and lakes across the country have been re-registered to run aquaculture farms instead of commercial fishing. This, observers, have noted has only resulted in the volumes being shifted from one fish industry segment to another.
Under the existing rules, the registration of a water body as an area of commercial fishing restricts its production potential, explained Anastasia Markova, an analyst with local publication Kursiv. She told WF that enterprises are only allowed to catch 30% of fish in the water body, even if they have stocked it by 100%.
The transition untied farmers’ hands, helping them to scale up operations and this has brought much of the recent growth, Markova said, but added that beyond this, the industry has made little progress.
Similarly, she said the expanding state aid is yet to make a difference, and amid the economic and regulatory challenges, farmers continue to find it difficult to make ends meet.
Farms in trouble
In 2023, Kazakh government allocated 4.1 billion tenge (US$ 9.1 million) to support aquaculture. This was nearly four times more than the funding given in the previous year, outlined Nariman Zhunusov, Chairman of the Fisheries Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture, during a recent government meeting.
This money has been spent on partial reimbursement of capital investments and operational costs, including those related to the purchase of fish feed, broodstock and veterinary medicines. However, many farmers continue to complain that the system doesn’t work.
Marlen Tursinari, a farmer running two farms in the Almaty region in the southeast of Kazakhstan, invested 120 million tenge ($270,000) in business expansion in 2023, counting for the promised generous state aid. But Tursinari advised that the aid has not been exactly what he expected so far.
“We grow fish, often without the necessary subsidies. Due to a lack of working capital, we experience difficulties with logistics and delivering fish to final customers,” Tursinari said. He also said the company’s own reserve funds have been the only thing to keep it afloat.
The story is similar for most Kazakh farmers. Valentin Ishchenko, from the Kostanai region in the central part of the country, also launched a farm, expecting to take advantage of the state aid. However, when the facility was up and running, the rules were adjusted, and only large farms with a capacity of at least 40 tonnes of output per year became eligible for subsidies.
Such a move is killing the Kazakh fish industry’s development opportunities, say farmers.
Unfortunately, the challenges they face don’t end there. Sergei Ponomarev, head of the working group on aquaculture development in the national parliament, Majilis, said they also suffer from a lack of domestic fish feed capacities.
Also, Danish and Polish companies had expressed an interest in building a fish feed factory in Kazakhstan, but the parties have failed to get the ball rolling.
“A paramount condition for the feed mill’s construction is the demand on the domestic market of at least 10,000 tonnes. The actual demand is only 3,000 tonnes per year,” Ponomarev said.
Looking ahead, many Kazakh fish farmers have set their hopes on a new aquaculture bill, a concrete regulation that follows on from discussions that began in 2022.
In March 2024, a group of Kazakh lawmakers announced the bill was almost ready and should become a game-changer for the industry. It is expected to make access to state aid as easy as possible and set transparent and adequate rules for fish farms’ operations. However, there’s still no definite information on when the bill will finally enter into law.
Meanwhile, aquaculture needs something more than loud statements for Kazakh production to take off, said Nurzhan Zhumagaliuly, a spokesperson for the Association of Fisheries.
Zhumagaliuly said that setting an ambitious production target ahead of designing a development plan was wrong. “We must first improve the relevant infrastructure, set up conditions appropriate to growth fish, improve the legislative framework, and only then declare such figures,” he said.
Natural constraints
Regrettably, there are other important factors that could prevent Kazakhstan aquaculture from reaching its 2030/270,000 tonnes per year target. Among these, is water scarcity. The country is water-dependent, with only 2.8% of its territory covered with water, and arid zones representing two-thirds. Indeed, it is already beginning to experience water shortages, and a deficit of up to 75 million cubic metres per year is predicted by 2030.
Zhumagaliuly said the authorities’ production target looks particularly unreachable given the worsening ecological situation.
“A more realistic figure is 60,000 tonnes [of aquacultural production] by 2030. There are fears that it will be difficult to achieve the planned indicators due to worsening water availability and water shortages, as well as high inflation, and logistics chain disruptions,” he warned.
In the face of looming water scarcity, fish farmers have often been locked in fierce tussles with local livestock manufacturers who demand unlimited access to fresh water.
Adilzhan Rakhyshev, head of the fisheries sector at the Council of the Agro-Industrial Complex of the Chamber of Entrepreneurs, confirmed that fish farmers frequently enter into fights with locals and rural authorities over access to fresh water. Unauthorised grazing and watering agricultural animals are a common challenge – jeopardising fish farmers’ investments, he explained.
Furthermore, in the face of climate change, some water bodies that authorities deemed acceptable for aquaculture when the programme was rolled out won’t be so in 2030. Erlan Mukanov, director of the Association of Fisheries of the Akmola Region, for example, noted that many ponds in the region have a depth of only 1.5 metres.
“We have hot summers and cold winters. In summer, shallow waters largely dry out, and in winter, the water freezes to a depth of up to one metre. In such conditions, native fish survive, but it is extremely difficult to keep commercial aquaculture running,” he said.
Mukanov suggested ponds and lakes could be deepened, making them more suitable for commercial fish farming. But he also conceded that this is a tall order requiring substantial investments, and that businesses are unable to bear the costs without help from the state.
