Kazakhstan Mulls Over $6.5 bln to Support Banks

Kazakhstan intends to provide 2.1 trillion-tenge ($6.5 billion) worth of government budget in strengthening the bank's condition covering the expenditures for the budget deficit and concerns about oil wealth fund. Minister of Finance Bakhyt Sultanov presented this proposal to the Cabinet last Monday. Based on the report from Bloomberg, Timur Suleimenov the National Economy Minister mentioned that the administration intends to execute a major transfer for the national oil fund amounting to 1.5 trillion tenge ($4.6 billion) with a similar allocation to the deficit.

The biggest landlocked state considers backing the Kazkommertsbank which is the country’s largest asset lender. The private bank struggled due to severe debts upon the duplicated defaults within the BTA Bank in 2014. The same year when the crude prices stalled and further weighed to tenge, weakening the Kazakh economy. The central bank has amplified emergency loans approximately by 400 billion tenge last February 9 and half of the said amount were pinned to  Kazkommertsbank.