The revival of the dynamics of the Kazakhstani banking sector in February was replaced by a sharp slowdown in March. The growth of sanctions pressure on the Russian Federation led to a significant weakening of the tenge and accelerated the pace of inflationary processes.
As a result, the loan portfolio of STBs increased by only 0.63% and amounted to 19.2 trillion tenge in March; its growth was supported by lending to individuals, while the loan portfolio to legal entities decreased.
The deposit base of STBs dropped by 4.55% to 26.4 trillion tenge in March. The reduction in the bank deposit portfolio was both due to the shrinkage of corporate and retail deposits. The main reason for withdrawals of deposits was the outflow of deposits from subsidiaries of Russian banks: Sberbank (-57.4%), Alfa-Bank (-10.2%) and VTB (-77.1%). The deposit outflow was also observed in almost all second-tier commercial banks (with assets of less than 1 trillion tenge).
Photos are from open sources.
