Head of Kazakh bank tags tenge deficit artificial

©Yaroslav Radlovsky

The deficit of tenge in Kazakhstan has been created artificially, says the Chairman of the Board of Halyk Bank of Kazakhstan Umut Shayakhmetova. She shared her views at the summit CFO Idea Exchange & Networking Event on March 4, Tengrinews reports.

"Today, I believe, the shortage of tenge liquidity is created artificially, because the regulator does not want the money to flow into the currency market and increase pressure on the exchange rate (of the tenge)," said the head of the Bank.

The deficit of tenge liquidity, according to Shayakhmetova, can lead to failures in payments, however.

"And I’m not talking only about failures of payments between legal entities. We can see that this happening already because banks are not lending. But when one company is not making payments to another one, this results in wages not being paid, loans not being repid to banks, they are all part of one big circle,” she said.

Shayakhmetova emphasized that if the negative scenario continues to unfold the banks themselves would end up in a liquidity crisis.

"If there are payment failures in the banking sector, i.e. when a bank is unable to make a payment, it will create a huge crisis in the country. Therefore, we are raising all these issues. This government regulation, such policies, can actually lead to weakening of the financial system," she concluded.

The shortage of the national currency - the tenge - became acute in the Kazakh banking sector after the devaluation of the tenge last year. The share of dollar-denominated deposits in most of the country's banks now exceeds 60% even despite small interest rates on such deposits. This made lending in tenge very difficult for the banks, thereby depriving the Kazakh economy of additional injections.

Writing by Dinara Urazova, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina

The deficit of tenge in Kazakhstan has been created artificially, says the Chairman of the Board of Halyk Bank of Kazakhstan Umut Shayakhmetova. She shared her views at the summit CFO Idea Exchange & Networking Event on March 4, Tengrinews reports.

"Today, I believe, the shortage of tenge liquidity is created artificially, because the regulator does not want the money to flow into the currency market and increase pressure on the exchange rate (of the tenge)," said the head of the Bank.

The deficit of tenge liquidity, according to Shayakhmetova, can lead to failures in payments, however.

"And I’m not talking only about failures of payments between legal entities. We can see that this happening already because banks are not lending. But when one company is not making payments to another one, this results in wages not being paid, loans not being repid to banks, they are all part of one big circle,” she said.

Shayakhmetova emphasized that if the negative scenario continues to unfold the banks themselves would end up in a liquidity crisis.

"If there are payment failures in the banking sector, i.e. when a bank is unable to make a payment, it will create a huge crisis in the country. Therefore, we are raising all these issues. This government regulation, such policies, can actually lead to weakening of the financial system," she concluded.

The shortage of the national currency - the tenge - became acute in the Kazakh banking sector after the devaluation of the tenge last year. The share of dollar-denominated deposits in most of the country's banks now exceeds 60% even despite small interest rates on such deposits. This made lending in tenge very difficult for the banks, thereby depriving the Kazakh economy of additional injections.

Writing by Dinara Urazova, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina

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