BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jun. 18
By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:
Kazakhstan’s National Bank has been doing joint work with Kazakh government in order to improve work coherence within the framework of Macroeconomic Policy Coordination Agreements for 2019, Trend reports with reference to the National Bank.
By the joint efforts of Kazakhstan’s National Bank, the Government and local executive bodies inflation was kept in the target range of 4-6 percent in 2019. Inflation was 5.4 percent by the end of 2019. The largest share of inflation accounted for food products prices, which rose by 9.6 percent last year, which was due to imbalances in supply and demand for certain food products.
“Within the framework of the mandate on price stability, the National Bank set the base rate at the level of 9-9.25 percent thorough 2019. Given the actual and forecast annual inflation, the base rate was assessed as neutral, which contributed both to the achievement of inflation targets and sustainable economic growth maintenance,” the report said.
The report said that in order to increase the monetary regulation efficiency, deposit auctions were introduced, amendments to the minimum reserve requirements were made, and the terms of issued notes were extended. This made it possible to effectively ‘link’ bank liquidity and limit its effect on inflation and outflow to the foreign exchange market.
Talking exchange rate policy, the National Bank adhered to the free floating national currency (tenge) exchange rate regime, the report said.
“As a result of joint measures taken with the Government to improve the balance of the foreign exchange market, the tenge exchange rate strengthened by 0.4 percent to 382.6 tenge per dollar at the end of 2019,” the report said.
Last year, gross international reserves increased by 2 percent to $90.7 billion, including gold and foreign exchange reserves of $29 billion, assets of the National Fund increased of $61.7 billion on the backdrop of favorable global markets and investment income.
---
Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh