Devaluation may drive airline tickets up in Kazakhstan

Devaluation of the tenge is going to drive the prices of airline tickets in Kazakhstan upwards, Tengrinews reports. Air Astana, the country's national air carrier: “The airline has no plans to hike ticket prices for domestic flights". But the company has changed its prices for international flights: “The overall price hike is 7-10%; for some routes such as Astana-Moscow, Almaty-Moscow, Astana-Istanbul, Almaty-Istanbul the prices remain unchanged”. "The airline ticket tariffs for international flights that were set in USD dollar will be adjusted to the new exchange rate of tenge," the press-service said. President of Luk Aero Airline Company Okean Kim said that the company was purchasing all the services from the foreign airports and fuel in US dollars. Besides, they have loans linked with a foreign currency, and their banks will recalculated the size of the due amount. Based on all these facts the company is planning to raise ticket prices. On February 11, 2014 the National Bank of Kazakhstan made a decision to propel the existing tengr/US dollar exchange rate of 155 tenge per dollar to 185 tenge per dollar in one step. The bank will now be keeping the exchange rate within the corridor of 182-188 tenge.