How Digital Tenge Will Help Farmers Receive Subsidies and Loans Faster

Kazakhstan continues the active implementation of the digital tenge into public administration processes, including the agro-industrial complex. According to the government’s press service, the national digital currency has already been tested in more than ten areas, and its large-scale integration into the public financing system is expected soon.

One of the key directions is the agricultural sector — specifically, public lending tools for agricultural producers. The digital tenge is expected to provide full control over the targeted use of funds and speed up tax refunds, such as VAT. In implemented pilot cases, the VAT refund period was reduced from 75 to 5 working days.

The digital tenge has also been successfully used for tracking funds allocated to road repairs and within the "Auyil Amanaty" microcredit program, where a mechanism for temporarily blocking budget transfers was tested.

At a government meeting, Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov emphasized the importance of large-scale and high-quality integration of the technology into key sectors of the economy. He instructed that no fewer than 100 major projects funded from the state budget and the National Fund should be transferred into the digital tenge format as soon as possible.

For the successful scaling of the tool, the Prime Minister pointed to the need for timely integration of the digital tenge with state information systems and for updating the legal framework. The development of a corresponding roadmap has been assigned to the National Bank in collaboration with relevant ministries.

According to Timur Suleimenov, Chairman of the National Bank, 257.5 billion digital tenge has already been put into circulation. The platform is currently in a pilot-industrial phase, with full-scale launch scheduled for December this year.

Binur Zhalenov, Head of Digital Transformation at the National Bank, noted that applications of the digital tenge are being actively explored in areas such as real estate and vehicle transactions, school meals, procurement of expensive goods, and public subsidies in the agricultural sector.

Legal amendments have also been drafted, including the introduction of digital accounts and other key instruments of the digital economy under the Law on Payments and Payment Systems.

What does this mean for agriculture?
The integration of digital tenge into agricultural support tools provides farmers with several advantages:
• Spending transparency – eliminates the risk of fund misuse
• Faster payments – reduces bureaucratic delays and tax refund times
• Targeted fund tracking – each transaction can be monitored down to the individual project level
• Support for new financing models – simplifies access to microloans and subsidies

Experts expect that the implementation of digital tenge will become a systemic step toward digitizing the agricultural sector and will ensure more efficient management of public resources.