BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov. 18
By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:
According to the preliminary data, current account of balance of payments formed a deficit worth $4.7 billion following the end of first nine months of 2019, Trend reports with reference to Kazakhstan’s National Bank.
The main factor for the deficit formation is the 21.6-percent decrease of balance of payments surplus by $4 billion to $14.5 billion.
Export of goods were insignificantly down by 2.2 percent to $42.7 billion, which is mainly due to the decrease of crude oil export by 10.7 percent, including decrease of oil price by 7.9 percent to $61.7 per barrel.
In turn, import of goods was up by 12.2 percent to $28.2 billion, which can be explained by increase of investments goods import by 31.4 percent. This is due to the acquisition of import goods and equipment for implantation of major energy and infrastructure projects.
Services export increased by 4.6 percent to $5.7 billion, whereas import decreased by 8.1 percent to $8.1 billion, which has positively affected the balance of the foreign services trade.
Income of direct foreign investors during the reporting period decreased by 2.5 percent to $16 billion. Over the half of the non-residents’ income from direct investments were allocated for funding of subsidiary Kazakh companies.
Financial account balance improved by $0.6 billion and formed a net outflow worth $1.2 billion. At the same time, net inflow of direct foreign investments amounted to $5.1 billion during nine months of 2019. As for portfolio investments, net increase of foreign investments of residents was $2.6 billion and $3.7 billion for other investments.
Reserve assets (excluding assets of Kazakhstan’s National Fund) amounted to $28.8 billion as of October 1, 2019
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