Foreigners in Kazakhstan are forbidden to carry on individual business

In Kazakhstan, foreigners are not allowed to carry on individual business, even if they reside in Kazakhstan. The same prohibition applies to stateless persons.

It follows from paragraph 3 of Article 1 of the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On private entrepreneurship”, which sets the concept of the individual entrepreneur, who is a citizen of the Republic of Kazakhstan and oralmans exercising individual entrepreneurship without forming a legal entity corresponding to the appropriate criteria set out in paragraphs 3 and 7 of Article 6 hereof.

A similar prohibition is set in paragraph 11 of Article 7 of the same Law: “Individuals with the exception of the citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan and oralmans are prohibited to be engaged in individual entrepreneurship”.

It should be noted that in the original version of the draft of the Law there was no such prohibition. There was no such a rule also in the previous Law “On individual entrepreneurship,” which has become invalid due to the adoption of the Law “On private entrepreneurship”.

But why it was necessary to introduce such a prohibition?

Kazakhstan’s policy has for many years actively encouraged people to do business in pursuit of development of entrepreneurship in Kazakhstan, creation of workplaces, increase of incomes, increase of the amount of taxes paid by businesses, etc.

However, along with this, the legislator limits the residents of Kazakhstan (which include not only the citizens of Kazakhstan, but also foreign citizens permanently or temporarily residing in Kazakhstan and stateless persons) in engagement in individual entrepreneurship, building a variety of senseless barriers.

The absurdity of such a prohibition is that a foreign person may engage in business activities through the establishment of their legal entity, thus easily surpassing such a prohibition.

I think that Kazakhstan under current conditions is required to reconsider its position on this issue, and in the absence of sufficient grounds for the existence of such a prohibition to provide the right for foreigners and stateless persons to be engaged in individual entrepreneurship.