National Bank to sell $700 to $800 million in March to throw money in state budget

This month, the National Bank of Kazakhstan is planning to sell $700 to $800 million to secure money transfers to the state budget. In February, the regulator sold $609 million, which accounted for 16% of the total amount of trading and around $29 million per day.

On the other hand, the National Bank is expected to buy $450 to $500 million to ensure that at least 30% of the assets of the Unified Accumulative Pension Fund are foreign currency. Last month, the regulator bought $400 million or 10% of all buying transactions on the market.

In February, the exchange rate of the tenge slipped by 0.6% to 450.65 tenge per USD. The average amount of daily trading transactions on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange rose from $172 million to $187 million, reaching $3.9 billion in total.

Since November 2023, the National Bank has been purchasing shares of KazMunayGas using money from the National Fund. So far, it has spent $2.8 billion on this. Samruk Kazyna later transferred this money to the state budget as dividend payouts. This means that the total amount of financing for the national economy at the expense of transfers from the National Fund grew to a record-high $11.7 billion in 2023.