National Bank of Kazakhstan allocates over $350 to maintain national currency

Since the beginning of October 2015, the National Bank of Kazakhstan has spent $367.5 million on foreign exchange intervention in order to support the national currency, tenge, the message of the National Bank of Kazakhstan said.

The message said that on Oct. 1, the National Bank of Kazakhstan conducted foreign exchange intervention on trading of Kazakh Stock Exchange JSC in the amount of $119.9 million. On Oct. 2, foreign exchange intervention of the National Bank of Kazakhstan amounted to $106.5 million. No trading was carried out at the Kazakh Stock Exchange Oct. 3-4.

Foreign exchange intervention of the National Bank of Kazakhstan amounted to $54.5 million on Oct. 5, $20 million on Oct. 6 and $66.6 million Oct. 7.

Earlier, on Aug. 20, the National Bank of Kazakhstan, with the aim of ensuring the implementation of a new monetary policy, canceled the currency corridor for the tenge’s rate and switched to an inflation targeting and free floating exchange rate.

As a result, the tenge’s rate against the US dollar fell by 26 percent.

On Sept.16, the National Bank of Kazakhstan said it started to hold the foreign exchange intervention due to the increased volatility of the exchange rate of the tenge, which is due to speculative operations of participants of the currency market in the absence of objective and significant changes in fundamental macroeconomic factors.

As a result of currency interventions, the tenge rate has increased from nearly 300 tenge/$1 in mid-September to 270.89 tenge/$1 as of Oct. 1.

/By Trend/