The assets of Kazakhstan’s Unified Accumulative Pension Fund (UAPF) shrank by 300 billion tenge ($718 million) after it allowed the early withdrawal of pension savings for housing investment, total.kz reported, citing National Bank Chairman Yerbolat Dossayev.

“Since the beginning of the year, the pension assets of the UAPF have decreased by 0.3 trillion tenge, or 2 percent to 12.6 trillion tenge due to the early withdrawal of funds by the population,” Dossayev told a government meeting. “The volume of pension contributions amounted to 191.7 billion tenge, and pension payments  60.1 billion tenge.”

The amount of accrued investment income from the beginning of this year amounted to 222.9 billion tenge, he said. Based on the results of the first two months of 2021, a yield of 1.7 percent was obtained with an inflation rate of 1.3 percent.

He added that the real profitability came from investment activities, as well as a market and exchange rate revaluation of pension assets.

The National Bank said that as of March 9, 138,900 applications for early withdrawal of pension savings were executed, amounting to  721.7 billion tenge.