Tag Archives: Kazakhstan

Iran suggests petrol imports for Kazakhstan

JULY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran could export refined oil products to Kazakhstan, Vahid Ahmadi, the Iranian deputy science minister, told media. This is important because Kazakhstan is looking for ways to boost its supply of oil-based products.

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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)

McDonald’s chooses Kazakh capital

JULY 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – US fast food giant McDonalds will open its first store in Kazakhstan this year in Astana, media reported quoting city officials. Last year McDonalds said it had agreed a franchise deal with businessman Kairat Bornabayev.

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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)

Kazakh airline makes profit

JULY 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Air Astana, the Kazakh airline part-owned by Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk Kazyna and BAE Systems, said that profit was $8.3m in the first half of the year compared to a $36.5m loss in the same period in 2014. The main driver of the increased profit was the cheaper price of jet fuel.

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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)

Chinese workers increase in Kazakhstan

JULY 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The number of Chinese migrants working in Kazakhstan doubled this year, according to the Kazakh ministry of labour. More than 12,000 Chinese labourers work in Kazakhstan, a third of the total foreign workforce. The increase shows how important Kazakhstan has become for China.

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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)

Kazakh Central Bank widens tenge trading corridor

Kazakhstan’s Central Bank chief Kairat Kelimbetov extended the bandwidth that the tenge could trade against the US dollar to 182-198 from 182-188, effectively giving it room to devalue by over 5%.

Hours after Mr Kelimbetov’s statement, exchange bureaus in Kazakhstan had already upped the price of $1 to over 188 tenge, breaking the psychological 187 value it had been pegged around for so long.

A drop in the value of the Russian rouble and the price of oil has pressured the tenge. The Kazakh Central Bank has stood firm, though, and defended the value of its currency while neighbours have devalued.

Still, Mr Kelimbetov said external pressures had triggered the bandwidth extension and that the move was designed to shift the tenge towards a full free-float over the next 12 months.

“This corridor allows the currency to fluctuate independently of the negative scenarios that may take shape outside Kazakhstan,” he said.

Mr Kelimbetov, though, said he didn’t see the tenge dropping below 192 against the dollar in the next 6 months.

The government has said that it wants its monetary policy to target inflation rather than a tenge-US dollar rate.

This bandwidth extension follows on from a gentle recalibration of the tenge. The Central Bank has allowed it to lose a couple of percentage points in value against the US dollar this year. In February 2014, the Kazakh Central Bank devalued overnight by 20%.

Kazakhs issue sovereign debt

JULY 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a move designed to plug a gap in it finances, Kazakhstan issued a $4b bond in two tranches.

These 10 and 30 year eurobonds with an initial yield of 3% and 3.5% over their US Treasuries equivalents were the second debt issued by Kazakhstan since October 2014, highlighting just how heavily a drop in oil prices had hit its budget.

And bond traders said that the yield, a measure of the risk factor attached to taking on the debt, had been relatively high.

“Remarkably, the placement yields are even higher than Russian sovereign bond yields,” Reuters quoted Alexey Bulgakov, a senior credit analyst at Sberbank, as saying.

Kazakhstan had not been active in the sovereign debt market since 2000, so two issues in the past nine months show how badly Kazakhstan needs the cash.

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