Grain Exports Continue to Grow in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is trying to diversify its foreign trade, based on oil and gas exports, by consistently increasing grain supplies. Currently, the main importers of Kazakh grain are neighboring states – former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as Iran and Afghanistan.

According to data released by Kazakhstan’s national railroads, Central Asia’s largest economy “exported 5.8 million tons of grain from the new harvest of the 2024/2025 grain season. This figure is 53% higher than the volumes of the previous period. The total volume of grain shipped by rail was 7.4 million tons.”

The main importer of Kazakh grain remains Uzbekistan, which purchased 2.2 million tons, up 34% from the same period in 2023/2024. Next are Tajikistan, which imported 857,000 tons (+49%), and Iran, which increased its purchases to 700,000 tons, an 18-fold increase year-on-year. Grain exports to Azerbaijan have grown especially noticeably, with deliveries through the territory of Russia and the Caspian Sea increasing 90 times, reaching 363 thousand tons. Afghanistan also increased purchases, importing 248 thousand tons of Kazakh grain (+36%). The growth in exports was made possible thanks to the record harvest recorded in 2024, when Kazakhstan harvested 26.7 million tons of grain.

According to Kazakhstan Railways, 10.6 million tons of grain were transported by the country’s railways in 2024, of which 8.1 million tons were designated for export. As for derivative grain products, for the first two months of 2025, flour exports from Kazakhstan amounted to 314 thousand tons. In 2024, flour exports increased by 3% to 3.2 million tons.

Kazakhstan, in cooperation with a number of Central Asian countries, is actively developing trade relations with China and India, the two largest economies in Asia. on March 9, 2025, the first rail container service from India to Kazakhstan was launched. The route was organized by Kedentransservice, a subsidiary of Kazakhstan State Railways, UztemirYulContainer, an Uzbek company, and the Turkmen Transport and Logistics Center.

A convoy of twelve twenty-foot containers loaded with ceramic tiles departed from the Indian port of Mundra for the Sorokovaya freight station in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. The route, totaling 1585 kilometers by sea (from India to Iran) and 4300 kilometers by rail, passes through the territories of Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. The estimated delivery time is 25 to 30 days, depending on the congestion at Iran’s Bandar Abbas port. This transportation is part of the development of container service along the eastern route of the international North-South transport corridor, developed by Russia and Iran in order to reduce the time and cost of delivery, as well as to facilitate trade between exporters and importers from Europe and countries of this region.