- Press Releases
- Media Coverage
- Events
- News Room
- Press Materials
Kazakh political leadership is not to be blamed for current crisis - National Bank head
Astana, March 5 2009
According to the head of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, Grigory Marchenko, Kazakhstan's political leadership cannot be blamed for the current financial crisis in Kazakhstan.
"Current crisis is not a fault of Kazakh political figures. The crisis came from the outside, from across the ocean," Marchenko said in an interview to Liter newspaper on Friday.
Meanwhile, according to him, "a big mistake was made by those, who overestimated the landing capabilities of domestic financial system."
"This refers to banks and individuals as well. I was astonished to find out that, for example, one third of all mobile phones was acquired with the help of customer's loans during certain months. Why? Is an expensive mobile phone an article of prime necessity?" Marchenko added.
He also noted that a lot of people raised customer's loans for more serious purchases, for example, cars. "People were attracted by the fact, that in this case there are less papers and red-tape, than during applying for auto loans in banks. People raised loans and only later they found out that an effective rate is much higher than the stated one," Marchenko said.
"In general, crisis is a big problem, but such like adjustment was inevitable from the point of view of both macroeconomy and behavior psychology of people, who may learn to count and evaluate the depth of debt pits, caused by beautiful advertising, only from their own mistakes. This lesson, provided to us by life, was in some way inevitable," Marchenko believes.
"There are opinions on insufficiency of the carried out Tenge devaluation. Of course, a more deep devaluation could have been more profitable for raising the competitiveness of Kazakh goods.
As is known, our major fields for economic growth are based on exports. A deeper devaluation could have compensated the deterioration of external business environment for these fields. This could have resulted in increase of budget revenues, received from exporters," he said.
"I'd like to one more time refute rumors aimed at arousing panic in the country. There will be no second wave of Tenge devaluation in Kazakhstan. For a period of over a year, the range of tenge fluctuation is set and is not liable to changes during this period," Marchenko said.