OCT. 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Bulat Utemuratov, a confident of Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev, signed a preliminary agreement to buy Temirbank and Alliance Bank from the Kazakh government. The Kazakh government bailed out the banks during the 2009 global financial crisis. It owns 67% of Alliance Bank and 79.9% of Temirbank.
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(News report from Issue No. 156, published on Oct. 16 2013)
SEPT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), half owned by the Azerbaijani government, released a new debit card with an in-built compass pointing to Mecca so that Muslims know which direction to pray. The new card may be a bit of a gimmick but Azerbaijan has been strengthening Islamic aspects of its banking system.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — DemirBank, one of Azerbaijan’s biggest banks, estimated its loan portfolio would grow by 16% by the end of 2014, Trend news agency reported quoting the bank’s deputy chairman Rauf Akhundov. Mr Akhundov’s assessment is another sign that Azerbaijan’s economy has recovered from the 2008/9 global financial crisis.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)
SEPT. 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A drop in savings held in Kazakh tenge in July showed people were losing confidence in Kazakhstan’s currency, the respected kapital.kz said. Central Bank data showed 350b tenge was withdrawn from bank accounts in July, reducing the proportion of savings held in tenge to about 61%, down from 66%.
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(News report from Issue No. 151, published on Sept. 11 2013)
AUG. 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Halyk Bank, Kazakhstan’s largest bank by lending, posted an 8.1% rise in the first half of 2013 compared to the same in 2012. Halyk Bank’s profit rose because of interest payments linked to an 18% rise in consumer loans, good news for the Kazakh banking sector which is recovering from the global financial crisis.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
JULY 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has given Azerbaijan’s AccessBank credit worth $50m media reported. AccessBank, set up in 2002, operates dozens of branches in Azerbaijan’s regions and gives loans to small and medium-sized businesses. AccessBank’s debt portfolio for agriculture businesses has grown in the last few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The proportion of bad loans in Azerbaijan will drop to 11% from 14% within the next 12 – 18 months, the ratings agency Moody’s said in a new report on the Azerbaijani banking sector. Moody’s regarded bad loans as those overdue by more than 90 days. It gave an upbeat assessment of Azerbaijan’s banking sector and said that real GDP would rise by 3.5% this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan will use $5b from its sovereign wealth fund to help young people get mortgages, a senior official from the presidential administration said. The announcement, coming shortly before a presidential election, could help young people buy a house or an apartment in Baku, an increasingly expensive property market.
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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)
JULY 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The chairman of Kazakh bank BTA, Erik Balapanov, resigned. The Kazakh government owns a majority stake in BTA bank, which it rescued from collapse during the 2008/9 global financial crisis. Mr Balapanov had been chairman of BTA Bank, which has debts of around $12b, since August 2012.
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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)
JUNE 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government’s plan to unite pension savings in one fund is looking vulnerable.
Unveiled in January, the plan had been greeted with a decidedly mixed reaction. The idea was to draw efficiencies from a single scheme and to create a fund worth roughly $20b to dip into during an economic recession.
Detractors of the plan, that would see 10 private pension schemes and one state-run pension scheme unified under the Central Bank, said it would be uncompetitive.
Kazakhstan had been the first post-Soviet country to encourage private pension schemes and many bankers considered ditching them tantamount to being a turn-coat.
Now Halyk Bank, which has the largest private pension scheme in Kazakhstan, has said it would rather sell off its pension scheme for cash by the end of 2013 than swap it for shares in nationalised bank BTA.
In March, Kazakhstan deputy PM, Kairat Kelimbetov said that the three biggest pension schemes would be offered shares in state-run bank BTA in exchange. BTA went bankrupt in 2009 during the global financial crisis.
BTA bank is still distressed and had to re-structure its $11b debt for the second time last year.
Halyk Bank’s opinion counts as it is the biggest bank in Kazakhstan by volume of cash lent.
The move to switch Kazakhstan’s pension scheme was always going meet resistance. This is likely to be an unsettling period for the Kazakh banking sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 140, published on June 24 2013)