Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.2
By Rashid Shirinov – Trend:
As of July 1, 2018, Kazakhstan's external debt amounted to $164.4 billion, or 96.3 percent of GDP, which is an improvement of 6.3 percent since the beginning of the year, the National Bank of Kazakhstan said in a message.
As many as 63 percent in the external debt structure account for the inter-firm debt, 26.1 percent – external debt of "other sectors" to unrelated creditors, 7.2 percent – public external debt (the government and the National Bank of Kazakhstan) and 3.7 percent account for external liabilities of the "banks" sector (second-tier banks and the Development Bank of Kazakhstan).
The National Bank also noted that the external debt of Kazakhstan decreased by $2.2 billion in the second quarter of this year.
The decrease was due to both the balance of payments operations (repayment of external loans attracted from affiliated organizations of China and syndicates of financial organizations, reduction of demand from foreign investors for short-term notes of the regulator) and non-operational changes (decrease in the market value of debt securities of Kazakhstan issuers and negative exchange rate difference).
The National Bank further noted that the external debt of state-controlled organizations (banks and organizations in which the public sector directly or indirectly owns more than half of the capital) is separately allocated in the structure of the external debt for analytical purposes, and it amounted to $26.5 billion as of July 1, 2018.
"The decrease in the second quarter of 2018 by $0.6 billion was due to the early repayment by the Samruk-Kazyna Fund of the loan raised in 2015 to acquire half of the stake in the KMG Kashagan B.V. company, as well as a decrease in the market value of Eurobonds of quasi-state issuers", the message says.
Kazakhstan's net external debt amounted to $46.6 billion, which is an increase of $0.5 billion in the second quarter of 2018. The public sector and" banks " are net lenders to the rest of the world, while "other sectors " are net borrowers.
The official exchange rate on October 2 is 364.35 USD/KZT.