Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 8
By Rashid Shirinov – Trend:
The National Bank of Kazakhstan has conducted foreign exchange interventions for the first time since last year, Kazakh media reported citing the financial regulator.
"In September 2018, imbalances significantly increased in the domestic foreign exchange market, which has led to the weakening of the national currency. Negative news from the world markets, which only partially directly affect Kazakhstan, led to overreaction of the domestic foreign exchange market participants and their clients,” the National Bank noted.
As a result, there was an increase in demand for foreign currency against the background of a decrease in its supply, the regulator explained.
The National Bank also pointed out that the most important external factor that had a negative impact on the domestic foreign exchange market in early September was the weakening of the Russian ruble against the background of geopolitical events.
Thus, to prevent the strengthening of devaluation expectations and to stabilize the domestic foreign exchange market, the National Bank of Kazakhstan, for the first time since October 2017, decided to conduct foreign exchange interventions.
"In the period from September 5 to 7, 2018, in the absence of foreign currency supply, the National Bank sold $520.6 million,” the regulator stated.
During these days, the National Bank’s share in the total trading volume on the currency exchange was about 80 percent, while overall for the month the share equaled 13.6 percent.
