BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov. 12
Trend:
Consumer lending rates in Kazakhstan have slowed down, Chairperson of the country’s Agency for Financial Market Regulation and Development Madina Abylkasymova said.
Abylkasymova made the remark at the roundtable on the topic ‘Results of the financial sector’s development during the COVID-19 pandemic’, Trend reports referring to Kazinform News Agency.
"The rates of consumer lending have significantly dropped, including due to a decrease in demand and incomes of the population. The volume of consumer loans from banks from January through September of 2020 grew by 0.7 percent to 4.2 trillion tenge ($17 billion)," she said adding that for the same period in 2019, the growth made up 18.6 percent.
According to her, in order to limit the constant growth of debt on loans, from January 1 of this year, a ban was introduced on the calculation of penalties and commissions on all unsecured consumer loans and micro-credits of individuals after 90 calendar days of the delay.
Moreover, in order to prevent the issuance of loans to knowingly insolvent citizens, a ban was introduced on the provision of loans to citizens with an income below the subsistence level by calculating the borrower's debt burden ratio with a preliminary assessment of solvency.
"Within the framework of prudential requirements, the risk weighting level for unsecured consumer loans in calculating the adequacy of equity capital has been increased. Measures to reduce the debt burden have prevented the growth of problem debts. The growth in the share of problem loans, observed since February of this year, reached a maximum value of 9.4 percent in May and by October decreased to 8.4 percent," added the chairperson.
(1 USD = 426.74 tenge on Nov.12)