Astana, 12 November. The Ministry of Labour and Social Protection is launching, from 11 January 2027, a pilot project to make social support more targeted: it will affect recipients of 12 of 36 types of payments whose families are assessed as having high and prosperous levels of wealth, the ministry said.
The aim of the project, the ministry says, is to take families’ real material well-being into account and to direct budget funds primarily to those who truly need them. The ministry acknowledges that current mechanisms do not always take recipients’ circumstances into account, so some support may go to families with high incomes. It is, the ministry stresses, “not a refusal by the state of its social obligations, but an improvement of the mechanisms for distributing state support”.
A project office will be set up at the ministry to coordinate the work, including representatives of the Presidential Administration, the Government Staff, the Kurultai and the expert community; subject specialists and independent experts will be involved. The project will proceed in stages: the ministry promises a comprehensive analysis of existing mechanisms, an assessment of possible social consequences, protection of citizens’ rights, an objective assessment of families’ material situation and no unjustified restriction of access to support.
The same day the ministry reported that 729 people have used the “Voluntary refusal of social payments” service since its launch in October 2026. The service works in the eGov Mobile app and on the eGov.kz portal and is intended primarily for citizens with high and prosperous levels of well-being. That release says that for 12 of 36 types of benefits the targeted approach will start on 1 January 2027, while the release on the pilot gives 11 January. The ministry does not explain the difference.
Earlier we also wrote about how a service for voluntary refusal of social payments appeared in eGov Mobile.
What it means: The new approaches will affect families with high and prosperous levels of well-being that receive 12 types of payments. The releases do not say which payments these are, what will happen to them for such families (reduction or cancellation) and by what thresholds a family is assigned to a high level.
Who benefits: According to the ministry, primarily those in need: it proposes to concentrate budget funds on them. Families with high and prosperous levels of well-being fall under the new approaches.
Background: A family’s level of well-being is assessed through the calculator in eGov Mobile; the ministry described how it works on 10 November.
