Kazakhstan will not use capital controls to boost its tenge currency that has plunged along with oil prices, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said on Sunday in an interview with state television.
Asked about the government's plans to broaden the use of the local tenge currency - and limit that of the dollar - in the Central Asian country, Nazarbayev mentioned capital controls used by Malaysia during the 1990s Asian financial crisis, but only to say such measures were unacceptable.
"We will not do that, we will not force (companies) to keep foreign currency here," he said. "This would be against market economy and against Kazakhstan's financial policy in general."
Nazarbayev did not say what exactly the government and the central bank would do in order to support the tenge which has lost 40 percent of its value against the dollar since August when Kazakhstan abandoned its dollar peg policy. The central bank has for the last few weeks limited its short-term lending to banks, which stabilised the exchange rate but choked the money market.
Comments
Comments are closed.