The numbers behind the decision came out with it, and inbusiness and Kapital carried them: Brent at $89 a barrel for 2026, $75 for 2027 and $65 for 2028, assumptions the bank says it keeps from the previous round. In June the figure for 2026 had been $90. The republican budget for 2026, passed by parliament last October, assumes $60 and 540 tenge to the dollar.
The gap between the two prices is the size of the windfall. At $89 and Friday's tenge, 456.56 to the dollar at the end of KASE trading, a barrel comes to 40,600 tenge on the bank's assumptions against 32,400 on the budget's, a quarter more even with a currency 15% stronger than the budget assumed. At the market's price the margin is wider. Brent traded above $95 on Thursday morning, and Azeri Light, the Caspian grade, printed $104.98 on Friday against the $65 in Baku's budget.
The spending the bank has in mind is already on paper. Finance minister Madi Takiyev put the National Fund's contribution to 2027 at 4.4 trillion tenge when he presented the draft to the outgoing cabinet on 25 August: a guaranteed transfer of 2.4 trillion and a targeted transfer of 2 trillion to be concentrated, in his words, on critically important facilities and projects. The 2026 law has a guaranteed transfer of 2.77 trillion and no targeted transfer at all. Spending rises by 2.5 trillion, to 30.2 trillion.
A budget that spends the oil windfall through the Fund pushes demand one way; the currency the same oil strengthens pulls prices the other.
The bank's release names the stimulus. Compared with the previous forecast round, it says, an increase in fiscal stimulus is expected in 2027, and the room for further cuts is limited as pro-inflationary factors and risks strengthen.
Inbusiness, reading the forecast, tied the stimulus to the planned allocation of additional transfers from the National Fund, which the bank expects to support domestic demand, and reported the 2027 inflation forecast raised to 6.5 to 8.5%. The 2026 range stays at 9 to 11%.
One clause cuts the other way. In 2027, by the same account, stronger fiscal stimulus will be partly offset by weaker dynamics in oil production. Why output weakens the bank does not say. The government's own plan already does: in August the energy ministry cut the year's production target from 99.55 to 96 million tonnes, the 3.5 million tonnes energy minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov counted as lost.
The sequence matters for anyone pricing tenge debt. From 18% in June, the first cut in two years, the rate came down to 17%, then to 16.75% in July and 16.25% now. Timur Suleimenov, as Tengrinews carried him, credits the accumulated tightness of the period when the rate was held at 18%, and says the possibilities for further reduction are limited for now. Its next decision is on 23 October. The draft budget with the 2 trillion targeted transfer in it is the document to watch between now and then, and the bank has told the market in advance how it reads it.
The tenge is the other channel, and the bank says so. Its strength, supported both by the monetary policy being conducted and by favourable oil prices, in the chairman's phrase, is doing part of the disinflation: non-food inflation slowed to 11.4% on the back of it. A budget that spends the oil windfall through the Fund pushes demand one way; the currency the same oil strengthens pulls prices the other. The raised forecast for 2027 says which effect the bank expects to win.