On January 2, 2019, several Kazakhstani media, including Forbes, reported that Kazakhstan would contribute 0.187% of the total budget to the United Nations next year and thus secure a place in the top ten largest donor countries of the international organization.
Verdict: False
The UN General Assembly Resolution of December 24, 2018, which determined the contribution of member countries to the organization’s budget for 2019, indicates that Kazakhstan will not even enter the top 50 donor countries and will provide only 0.178% of the total income.
The source of the news was an informative article on the “UN News” Russian-language website. It says that the General Assembly has approved a new scale of assessments for the next three years. Its author explains that the scale is based on the principle of the financial solvency of states: “If the economy of a particular state develops successfully, then the size of its contributions to the UN budget also grows.” Following the explanations in the article, the examples of contributions from different states to the UN regular budget are given, but there is no question of any ranking:
Meanwhile, the real list of the top ten donor countries of the UN budget in 2019 will look like this:
| Country | Budget share | Gross contribution ($) |
| US | 22.0% | 674.2 million |
| China | 12.0% | 367.9 million |
| Japan | 8.6 % | 262.5 million |
| Germany | 6.1% | 186.6 million |
| United Kingdom | 4.6% | 140.0 million |
| France | 4.4% | 135.7 million |
| Italy | 3.3% | 101.3 million |
| Brazil | 2.9% | 90.3 million |
| Canada | 2.7% | 83.8 million |
| Russia | 2.4% | 73.7 million |
Kazakhstan is on the 51st position between Egypt and Slovakia in this improvised rating. In the coming year, the Republic will provide 0.178% of revenues to the UN budget, which in absolute terms will amount to 5.5 million US dollars (about 2.08 billion tenge).
The estimated amount of the contribution of Kazakhstan is 13 times less than that provided by the UN Russia, which closes the top ten of the leading countries. The UN regular budget consists of contributions from 193 member countries and two non-member countries. The total budget for 2019 was approved at 3.1 billion US dollars.
