Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 20
Trend:
The actions taken by Kazakhstan's government and national bank are preventing a default in the country, RIA Novosti quoted Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov as saying August 20.
Massimov announced Thursday that Kazakhstan launched a new monetary and credit policy based on the free-floating rate of the tenge, the Kazakh national currency. He also canceled the currency corridor.
"If the government and the national bank didn't do anything, watching passively the situation, if they didn't intervene in any processes, and if all the problems were settled through "burning" of the national fund's reserves, Kazakhstan would have ultimately faced a default," said Massimov at a briefing, according to News Kazakhstan.
"But all these actions that we are taking, namely the shift to the structural reforms, saving of reserves and shrinking of expenditures, will bring Kazakhstan out [of crisis] more sustainable," he added.
In mid-July, Kazakhstan's national bank expanded the corridor for tenge fluctuation from 170-188 tenges to 170-198 tenges against $1.
This was explained by the deterioration of the situation beyond the country, and first of all by the oil price drop.
Edited by CN