Over 11 thousand families received loans under 7-20-25 program — National Bank

At the Government session chaired by Prime Minister Askar Mamin, Chairman of the National Bank Erbolat Dossaev reported on the state of the banking sector, according to the results of 11 months of 2019.

As Dossaev noted, on Dec. 9, the National Bank maintained the base rate at 9.25% with a corridor of +/- 1 pp. According to the estimates of the National Bank, the level of the base rate will ensure the achievement of inflation targets in the corridor of 4-6% in 2019-2020.

In November of this year, annual inflation was below our expectations and amounted to 5.4%. The largest contribution continues to come from food products, which have risen in price by 9.7% over the year. Particularly noted is the increase in prices for bakery products and cereals — by 15.5%, meat and meat products — 13.4%, fish and seafood — 12.2%,” said the chairman of the National Bank.

The increase in prices for non-food products continues to slow down — from 6.4% in December last year to 4.8% in November of this year due mainly to a decrease in gas prices by 4.5%. Tariff growth for paid services remains insignificant — 0.6% in annual terms. Until the end of this year, the inflation rate is estimated at 5.5-5.7%.

The exchange rate of tenge as of Dec. 12, 2019, amounted to 384.63 tenge per dollar, having weakened by 0.1% compared to the beginning of the year. The situation in the foreign exchange market in November-early December of this year was stable. The price of oil on the world market has increased since the beginning of November by 5.8%.

An important internal factor that influenced the country's foreign exchange market in November of this year was the increase in the supply of foreign currency by exporters during the “tax week”.

According to preliminary data, the National Bank’s gold and foreign currency reserves as of December 1 of this year amounted to $28.7 billion. As a result of the decrease in the value of the gold portfolio and the outflow of foreign currency from banks' accounts with the National Bank, the foreign exchange reserves in November this year decreased by 2.9% or $842 million. However, the decrease was partially offset by the receipt of foreign currency in the accounts of the Government.

The assets of the National Fund amounted to $60.5 billion, an increase of 0.9% in November this year.

Substitution of deposits in foreign currency by tenge deposits continues. Deposits in national currency for 10 months of this year increased by 8.5%, foreign currency deposits decreased by 6.5%. As a result, the level of dollarization of deposits decreased from 48.4% at the beginning of the year to 44.7% in October this year.

The maximum interest rates for non-term deposits at present are 9.8%, for term deposits — 12%, and for savings accounts for 14.6%.

The total loan portfolio since the beginning of the year increased by 3.1% to 13.5 trillion tenge at the end of October of this year. The portfolio of long-term loans increased over the 10 months of this year by 3.9% to 11.5 trillion tenge, and short-term loans decreased by 1.3% to 2 trillion tenge.

The volume of new loans for 10 months of this year increased by 13.2% compared to the same period in 2018.

The implementation of the Program of concessional lending to priority sectors of the economy (600 billion tenge) continues. As of Dec. 6, 2019, banks received 434 applications in the amount of 265.6 billion tenge, 268 projects were approved in the amount of 149.1 billion tenge, 174 loans worth 54.8 billion tenge were issued.

As part of the implementation of the 7-20-25 program, as of Dec. 5, 2019, 11,369 families received loans worth 130.8 billion tenge.

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