At an extended government meeting, the head of the supervisory department Yerbolat Dossayev spoke about the situation in the financial market. The bank deposits, in particular, also increased by 16.1% to KZT 22.1 trillion. The national currency deposits grew by 28%, foreign currency deposits - by 0.4%.
“Prompt decisions on the base rate at the beginning of the pandemic made it possible to limit the threat of falling demand for tenge assets and prevent excessive weakening of the exchange rate. After leap to 46.7% in March 2020, dollarization has dropped to 37.3%, the lowest level since 2013. As for the borrowing market, in 2021 the main efforts will be aimed at creating the necessary conditions for the development of market principles of business loans with the National Bank’s gradual withdrawal from the state programs on economic support starting from 2023,” Dossayev noted.
Further measures to strengthen the floating rate regime and comply with market principles when converting the assets of the National Fund and conducting operations to smooth out market volatility will be also taken this year.
Dossayev notes that the chronic deficit of the balance of payments, which has been observed since 2015, has disimproved against the background of a worsening external environment. 2020 year-end, the deficit of (-) $5.7 billion is expected with a further deepening to (-) $6.5 billion in 2021 due to the recovery of imports and payments of foreign investors' income.
“The assets of the National Fund decreased by $3.1 billion to $58.7 billion last year due to a record volume of transfers in the amount of 4.8 trillion tenge and a drop in revenues by more than two times compared to 2019. Despite the high market volatility, the investment income of the National Fund is positive and amounts to $4.1 billion (7.56%). Gold and foreign exchange reserves as of 2020 increased by $6.7 billion and reached $35.7 billion. The gold portfolio grew by $4.7 billion and at the end of last year amounted to 388 tons. The freely convertible currency assets increased to $12.1 billion. In general, international reserves amounted to $94.4 billion,” he said.
Meanwhile, retirement assets as of 2020 increased to 12.9 trillion tenge with the yield of 10.9%. The amount of accrued investment income has amounted to 1.3 trillion tenge, which is 563 billion tenge, or 80.4% more compared to 2019.
Source: https://lsm.kz/doklad-2021
Photos are from open sources.
