Kazakhstan plans to stop regulating prices for petrol, a Tengrinews.kz journalist reports following a press briefing held today in Astana, the country’s capital city.
Kazakhstan plans to stop regulating prices for petrol, a Tengrinews.kz journalist reports following a press briefing held today in Astana, the country’s capital city.
Among the public officials talking to journalists there was First Vice PM Bakhytzhan Sagintayev, Energy Minister Vladimir Shkolnik, KazMunaiGas National Oil Company Chairman of the Board Sauat Mynbayev.
“Having studied all possible options and discussed the issue with market players, we decided there should be a flexible pricing model given the ongoing volatility at the FX market (…) The Government has decided to stop regulating prices for AI-92 and AI-93 petrol, two most common affordable types of petrol”, Vice PM Sagintayev said.
Earlier Mr. Andrei Lukin, Vice Mayor of Astana, said at a press conference that the recently changed exchange rate of the tenge, Kazakhstan’s national currency, would have no effect on prices for petrol in the capital city.
The price ceiling had been set by the Energy Ministry back in mid-May.
August 20 the country’s Government and the Central Bank renounced the currency band policy, opting for the free floating of the tenge. The same day the national currency weakened by 26% in one day, reaching 257 tenge for USD 1. Now the exchange rate varies between 240 and 245 tenge for USD 1.
August 20 the country’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev said that the measures to maintain the set tenge exchange rate in 2014-2015 had cost a total of $28 billion, with $10 billion spent in 2015.