Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 30
By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:
President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev called on the National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan to perform stress testing of entities within the national banking sector, the press service of the head of state said.
Nazarbayev made the remarks Nov.30 while delivering his annual State-of-the-Nation Address in Astana.
"The National Bank should conduct stress testing of all entities within the national banking sector concerning non-performing loans," the head of state said.
Nursultan Nazarbayev went on to add that the banks unable to solve the capitalization problem must leave the financial system.
The head of state stressed that Kazakhstan banks must comply with all international standards.
In July 2015, the tenge rate was 186.8 tenge per dollar.
Tenge started devaluating on Aug. 20 when the National Bank of Kazakhstan abolished the currency corridor for tenge and switched to inflation targeting and a free floating rate to ensure the implementation of a new monetary policy. As a result, tenge lost some 30 percent of its value.
In September and October 2015, the National Bank abandoned the transition to a free-floating tenge rate and started to sell currency instead. The bank's share in the currency market reached 60 percent. Kazakh National Fund and the National Bank sold more than $5 billion in this period.
Kazakhstan's National Bank said Nov.5 that it will minimize its participation in the currency market in order to maintain its own and the National Fund's gold-exchange assets. As a result, the exchange rate of tenge fell sharply from 298.92 tenges per dollar on Nov.5 to 307.53 tenges per US dollar on Nov.6.
Over the past two years, tenge lost more than half of its value. In early 2014 exchange rate of tenge was at 154.06 tenge/dollar.
---
Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova