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No preconditions for tenge devaluation - National Bank head
Almaty , December 2 6 2008
There are currently no grounds to expect a devaluation of the tenge, the chairman of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, Anvar Saidenov, said.
"There are no objective preconditions today for devaluing the tenge," he said during a web conference.
"If there is significant pressure on gold and foreign currency reserves, and they begin depleting, which is not the case now, then we would have to devalue in order to maintain reserves at a sufficient level," he said.
Many borrowers on the market have loans denominated in dollars. For them a stable tenge is extremely important, he said.
"The current situation differs from 1999, when we had a floating exchange rate. Today Kazakhstan has a large external debt and a significant volume of domestic loans denominated in dollars. If you weigh whether the country wins or loses from a devaluation of the tenge, then in comparison to 1999 we would only lose," he said. The exchange rate was 120.3 tenge/$1 on January 1, 2008, and 120.7 tenge/$1 on December 26.