Tag Archives: sovereign wealth fund

Kazakh president orders spending spree

FEB. 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered his government to spend more than 360b tenge ($1b) building houses and supporting small and medium-sized businesses, a policy he hopes will both stimulate Kazakhstan’s flatlining economy and cement support for his Nur Otan party ahead of parliamentary elections next month.

His plan also involves trying to protect both Kazakhstan’s $4b national pension pot by diversifying investments into other currencies and second tier banks by buying up their bonds, a form of financial aid.

With more data showing that low oil prices and a devalued currency have dragged down Kazakhstan’s economy, Mr Nazarbayev appears to have decided that now is the moment to be bold.

“Many countries have found themselves in a difficult situation and are forced to cut social spending, suspend projects, resulting in rising unemployment. Yet we continue building industrial facilities and open new markets,” he told a government meeting. “At the centre of all my orders are the needs of the common man, his well-being and stability.”

Three government financial insti- tutions — the Baiterek Holding company, the House Building Bank of Kazakhstan and the Samruk Kazyna sovereign wealth fund — will admin- ister funds for the house building spending spree, official media reported. The $1b will come from pushing cash earmarked for a social spending in 2017 forward by a year.

Mr Nazarbayev likes to act the father figure, looking after the Kazakh people during times of hardship. This showed through with his emphasis on looking after the common man. He said that his spending plans would create 18,000 jobs, build 42 new schools and extend and improve the electric grid system.

“Full and effective utilisation of funds allocated for the implementation of these measures will stimulate economic activity, support employment and add 1% into economic growth in 2016,” he said.

If Mr Nazarbayev needed a reminder of the battle he faces to turn around the economy, it came from the Central Bank. It said the country’s deficit measured $5.3b in 2015, a result of the currency depreciation. The tenge halved in value in 2015.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 267, published on Feb. 12 2016)

 

Editorial: Emergency loan for Azerbaijan

JAN. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The IMF’s arrival in Baku is a game-changer. For the Azerbaijani government to invite the IMF to Baku means that their economy is in a more perilous position then they had been letting on.

The manat has lost 35% of its value over the past month; demonstrations have stirred in regional cities; inflation is rising; jobs are disappearing.

We know all this but we’ve also been told that the Azerbaijani government has, officially at least, saved up around $35b in its sovereign wealth fund for exactly this sort of scenario.

Why then, would Azerbaijan invite the IMF to Baku to discuss a loan? The impression that the IMF’s arrival in Baku had created is that things in Azerbaijan are worse than they have been letting on. Perhaps the authorities haven’t really saved up $35b. Perhaps they don’t have access to all the $35b.

What is known is that IMF are in town until the end of next week and that Azerbaijan’s finances, and the extent of their dire financial scenario is currently shrouded in mystery.

ENDS

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(Editorial from Issue No. 265, published on Jan. 29 2016)

 

Business comment: Wealth fund critics come out

JAN. 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — At the end of December, Berik Otemurat, a senior official at Kazakhstan’s Central Bank, picked up the phone and called several newspapers to speak out against the way the sovereign wealth fund was being managed.

He was promptly sacked after his quotes started populating articles. He had said that Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund to be doomed.

Mr Otemurat’s argument was that the sovereign wealth fund was risk averse and that it was pilfering away its cash on low yield investments making low returns.

Low oil prices and the economic slump would combine, he said, to wipe away the fund’s reserves in 6 to 7 years.

Timur Kulibayev, President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s son-in-law and powerful businessman, spoke out against Kazakh money managers to but he’s not in any real danger of losing his job.

He has criticised for months the behaviour of the Central Bank and, effectively, said their management of the economic crisis has been poor.

Mr Kulibayev repeated his criticism last week. His bottom line was: “The government cannot continue spending its reserves to prop up the tenge or the reserves will be extinguished in three years.”

Of course, Mr Kulibayev, the second-richest man in Kazakhstan, is in a much stronger position than Mr Otemurat, so his words will not make him a pariah of the elite. This parallel goes to show that there are only few people who can speak out against Kazakhstan’s economic policy and face no consequences.

The managers of the sovereign wealth fund have said they will change their policy this year. Let’s see if they can stop the drain.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)

 

Kazakh Samruk-Kazyna sacks staff

JAN. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Samruk-Kazyna, the company that manages Kazakhstan’s state assets, said that it had made nine out of 16 of its directors redundant to save money. Like other state institutions, Samruk-Kazyna has been ordered to save costs to combat a drastic economic slow- down triggered by a slump in oil prices and a recession in Russia. Samruk-Kazyna’s chairman Umirzak Shukeyev announced the planned changes just before Christmas.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

 

Fund chief leaves in Kazakhstan

JAN. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Berik Otemurat left the Kazakh National Investment Corporation, the unit within the Central Bank that invests money from the Oil Fund, after he gave a series of interviews to major Western publications criticising its strategy. It’s unclear if Mr Otemurat was sacked or he resigned. Eszhan Birtanov, former head of the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange, was named as the new head of the National Investment Corporation.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

 

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan diversify investment strategies

ALMATY, JAN. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan will diversify the investment portfolios of their Sovereign Wealth Funds in 2016 away from low yield bonds and currency holdings to high- risk equity and property investments.

Slow global economic growth has forced Sovereign Wealth Funds to ditch conservative investment strategies in search of higher yields and Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are following a trend.

Bloomberg News quoted Berik Otemurat, director at the Kazakh Central Bank’s National Investment Corporation, as saying: “We’re sitting on a huge pile of cash and not making real returns. It’s especially urgent to address this, given the gloomy outlook for oil prices and reduced inflows into the National Fund.”

Azerbaijani officials have said that they want to increase the cap on real estate investment in its investment portfolio to 10% from 5%for 2016, as well as raising the cap for equity investment to 15% from 10%. SOFAZ, Azerbaijan’s oil fund, has been buying up high-profile property for the past couple of years and it started 2016 by buying a 19th century palazzo in Milan for 97m euro.

“In 2016, SOFAZ will be implementing investment policy, which makes it possible to get the maximum yield at low risk of capital loss,” SOFAZ said of its of strategy.

But Indra Overland, research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, said Sovereign Wealth Funds follow market trends, rather than set them, which generates a risk that will buy at the top, rather than the bottom, of the market.

“This change is probably driven by a combination of desperation over low oil price, dissatisfaction with historically low returns on bonds and worries about the stability of financial markets, especially related to China,” Mr Overland said.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

 

 

Kazakh President praises cuts

DEC. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna has cut some costs but still needs to do more to help Kazakhstan through the current economic downturn, President Nursultan Nazarbayev said in an interview with local journalists. Mr Nazarbayev said the fund cut costs by 50b tenge ($145m) this year, but was continuing to buy subsidiaries.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

 

Kazakhstan’s Samruk Kazyna sells stakes

NOV. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk Kazyna said that it would sell stakes in two of its power related companies, its nuclear agency Kazatomprom and its power holding company Samruk-Energo, within a year, part of a wide-scale IPO of state- owned companies.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)

 

Kazakh Team Astana receives cycling licence

NOV. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – After a four-month-long review linked to a drug doping scandal, Astana Pro cycling team received its World Tour licence. Astana Pro, which is funded by the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna and races in the national colours, has been involved in several doping cases since it was set up in 2007.

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(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)

 

Kazakhstan’s Samruk-Kazyna gets Kashagan loan

OCT. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Samruk-Kazyna, Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund, signed a five-year loan agreement for up to $1.5b to help fund its purchase of a 8.4% stake in the Kashagan oil field. Kazmunaigas, Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company, agreed earlier this year to sell half its 16.81% stake in Kashagan to Samruk–Kazyna. The manoeuvre is considered a mechanism to help Kazmunaigas raise funds during this period of depressed oil prices.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)