Marchenko is against agricultural bank in Kazakhstan

Head of Kazakhstan's National Bank Gregory Marchenko stands against creation of a dedicated agricultural bank in Kazakhstan, Tengrinews.kz reports. In the plenary meeting of Kazakhstan Senate deputy Kuanysg Aitkhanov asked the National Bank's chairman for his opinion of the prospect of creation of the agricultural bank in Kazakhstan. "I have been working for a long time. We used to have an agricultural bank, it went bankrupt three times: in 1994 we held a restructuring, in 2002 it went bankrupt and was bought low by private investors and re-branded into Nauryz bank. Nauryz bank went bankrupt a bit later. Unfortunately, the results of the operations of state or near-state banks during the period of our independence have been quite negative in this sector. Being the National Bank and based on our experience, we are against creation of specialized banks in this sector (in agriculture)," Marchenko said, but added that there was an alternative way. "Nobody prevents us from just opening a bank or buying an existing bank and focusing its activities mainly on agriculture." Evidently displeased with Marchenko's answer, senator Aitkhanov expressed his opinion: "46 percent of Kazakhstan's population live in villages. Besides 200 thousand agricultural producers, there are those who work in education, healthcare, culture, sport and business. In short, the number of banks' clients exceeds 1 million people in villages and it proves that we need an agricultural bank. Should there be such a bank, it would not only deal with distribution of the billions (of tenge) aimed for development of the agricultural complex, but would also strictly control their effective use." Aitkhanov was supported by deputy Svetlana Dzhalmagambetova: "Rather then opening KazAgro, financial corporations or other instruments replacing second-tier banks, it is better to open one AgroPromBank." By Renat Tashkinbayev