BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 6
By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:
Kazakhstan’s National Bank will continue acquisition of gold in 2020, Deputy Governor of the National Bank Aliya Moldabekova said, Trend reports with reference to the National Bank.
Moldabekova said that 57 tons of gold were purchased by the bank in 2019 and another 60 tons are to be purchased.
“This practice is paying off now, given the uncertainty and fears on the global financial markets, gold assets display properties of a safe asset, ensuring the safety of international reserves,” Moldabekova said.
Moldabekova said that in order to stabilize the situation on the foreign exchange market amid coronavirus spread, as well as to ensure financial stability, the National Bank was forced to carry out foreign exchange interventions over last days of February.
“The National Bank has sold $94.8 million in February. Interventions were carried out at the market of gold and foreign exchange assets and did not affect dynamics of the exchange rate. At the same time the National Bank is ready to take necessary measures to prevent excessive and speculative fluctuations of the national currency,” she said.
Moldabekova also added that the need for transfers from the National Fund of Kazakhstan to the budget amounted to 263 billion tenge ($691.6 million) in February.
“In order to provide for guarantee transfer sale of $462.5 million or 175 billion tenge was carried out. The entire volume was sold at the stock exchange in a course of a month,” she said.
Moldabekova disclosed that based on the preliminary data foreign exchange reserves of Kazakhstan amounted to $29.9 billion in February 2020 (increase by $550 million in a month).
“The foreign currency portion of reserves decreased by $104 million to $9.6 billion, which was fully offset by the increase in the value of the gold portfolio by $658 million (to $20.3 billion),” she explained.
Moldabekova added that the decrease in foreign currency reserves was caused by the repayment of external debt and foreign exchange interventions. Concluding she noted that 3.6 tons of gold was purchased from local producers, of which 1.9 tons were sold to the National Fund in February 2020.
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