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Сми о Казахстане (9– 16 февраля 2009 года) оглавление

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ИА Reuters (USA), February 12, 2009, Raushan NURSHAYEVA, Olzhas AUYEZOV, UPDATE 1-KAZAKH BANKER ASKS GOVT TO PRIORITISE DOMESTIC
Trading Markets (USA), February 7, 2009, KAZAKHSTAN NATIONALIZES TOP BANKS AMID DEEPENING CRISIS - KAZKOMMERTSBANK RECEIVES CONS
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ИА Reuters (USA), February 12, 2009, Raushan NURSHAYEVA, Olzhas AUYEZOV, UPDATE 1-KAZAKH BANKER ASKS GOVT TO PRIORITISE DOMESTIC DEBT



The chairman of Kazakhstan's No.2 bank, Kazkommertsbank, asked the government on Thursday to make domestic debt repayment a priority in case any local bank succumbs to the global crisis and goes bankrupt.

The global liquidity crunch and economic slowdown have hit Kazakh banks' asset quality and left them little chance to refinance foreign debt, out of which about $11 billion is due to be repaid this year.

The government earlier this month nationalised the central Asian state's largest bank BTA BTAS.KZ and is in the process of taking over No.4 bank Alliance (ALLBq.L: ссылка скрыта, ссылка скрыта, ссылка скрыта).

Analysts say the state may need to restructure the two banks' foreign debt as some creditors could demand early repayment citing loan covenants.

"We must be ready for the worst scenarios," Kazkommertsbank (KKGByq.L: ссылка скрыта, ссылка скрыта, ссылка скрыта) Chairman Nurzhan Subkhanberdin told a conference of the Nur Otan party led by President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

"In case some bank is liquidated, it is necessary to prioritise its liabilities to Kazakh customers, first of all individuals, then corporates," Subkhanberdin said.

"This issue ... must be tackled preemptively."

Prime Minister Karim Masimov said last week the government would not let any banks fail. But Nazarbayev told the same conference on Friday BTA had been on the brink of default.

"Had the government ... not taken measures, BTA would have defaulted in two days," Nazarbayev said.

Analysts say the country might need external help, such as loans from the International Monetary Fund, to deal with capital outflows and bank debt at a time when prices for oil, Kazakhstan's key export, are low.

Сайт «EurasiaNet» (USA), February 11, 2009, KAZAKHSTAN TO SCALE BACK COTTON PRODUCTION



Kazakhstan has become the third Central Asian country to plan a reduction in cotton cultivation in 2009.

Previously, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan announced cutbacks in the amount of land to be planted with cotton. [ссылка скрыта]. Kazakhstan’s vice minister for agriculture, Arman Evniev, said falling demand for cotton meant farmers would be better off growing vegetables.

"The area under cotton [cultivation will be 84 percent of the previous year. In the liberated areas, we plan to grow vegetables and melons," the Kazakhstan Today news agency quoted Evniev as saying February 11.

The global trade of cotton is expected to contract by 21 percent and cotton prices are set to fall by an estimated 16 percent in 2009, the International Cotton Advisory Council has said. In 2008, Kazakhstan planted 165,000 acres of cotton.

Trading Markets (USA), February 7, 2009, KAZAKHSTAN NATIONALIZES TOP BANKS AMID DEEPENING CRISIS - KAZKOMMERTSBANK RECEIVES CONSIDERABLE CASH INJECTION



Kazakhstan effectively nationalized two of its top four banks, number one BTA Bank and number four Alliance Bank, and sacked BTA Banks ex-opposition leader as its key manager, on February 2 as a deepening financial crisis acquired political undertones in Central Asia's biggest economy.

On February 2, BTA Bank issued a statement indicating the government takeover was due to "mounting concerns over the state of Kazakhstan's economy in the last three months".

BTA Bank, the country's largest bank by assets and capital, said that it will continue to receive "full backing from the government".

"We will continue providing our support to BTA, which is of the utmost importance for Kazakhstan and is a major lender to the non-commodity sector," said Arman Dunayev, deputy chairman of the SamrukKazyna fund, in a statement issued by BTA Bank. "It is our job to make sure that BTA is part of every government program."

Despite the change in ownership, BTA Bank said it will continue to "operate with full legal and operational continuity, including, among other things, honoring all of its obligations".

The government said it would pay 251 billion tenge (US $2.06b) for 78.14 percent of shares in BTA, which has assets of $31 billion, to boost the banks capital by more than $2 billion. Separately, the government said it would rescue Alliance Bank by buying 76 percent of the shares from its key shareholder for a symbolic sum of 100 tenge (82 cents) and deposit $200 million into its accounts to boost liquidity.

Alliance Bank, whose global depositary receipts are listed in London, appeared to confirm the government statement by indicating that its major shareholder, Seimar Alliance Financial Corporation, had decided to sell 76% of its voting shares to the SamrukKazyna fund, the state holding and investment company. "This decision was made by mutual agreement of the parties with the objective of further capitalization and increased financial stability of the bank," Alliance Bank said in a statement.

Ulterior political motives

Injecting political spin into the shake-up, the state financial regulator dismissed Mukhtar Ablyazov, the chairman of BTA and a former opposition leader, along with his Senior Chairman of the Board Jaksylyk Jarimbetov, as part of the takeover.

"The Financial Supervision Agency recognized activities of Ablyazov and Jarimbetov as colliding with the interests of customers and creditors, not to mention demands of the acting legislation, and relieved both of their duties," Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Masimov said at the Cabinet meeting.

"The SamrukKazyna Board will be meeting soon. It will choose new executives for this financial institution. Now that the state is one of the shareholders, everything will be all right with BTA-Bank. Its customers may set all their fears aside," Masimov said.

Ablyazov, a founding father of a local opposition party, lashed out at the authorities after the move, accusing the state of "corporate raiding".

"Today's actions by the government against BTA represent abuse of power and corporate raiding," Ablyazov, who has no direct interest in BTA and denied being a shareholder, said in a statement whose authenticity was confirmed by BTA.

The government dismissed his objections as groundless.

"We cannot talk about corporate raiding because everything is done within the framework of the law," Finance Minister Bolat Zhamishev told reporters.

Ablyazov fell out with [Kazakh President] Nazarbayev in 2002 over what he described at the time as a lack of democracy in Kazakhstan and was briefly jailed in 2002 on corruption charges. Eventually pardoned, he publicly quit politics and focused on BTA.

Ablyazov has had problematic relations with the government, said Tanya Costello, an analyst at Eurasia Group. He has criticized the government for not spending more of its reserves to support the ailing banking sector and has also been critical of the nationalization plan, according to Costello.

Financial Supervision Agency Director Yelena Bakhmutova pointed out that "everything has been done within the framework of the acting legislation on the basis of examination of the bank's performance".

"No information the Financial Supervision Agency possesses indicates that Mr. Ablyazov possesses more than 10% interests," Bakhmutova said during the break in the Cabinet meeting. "Moreover, he himself claims that he has never exerted any influence with the bank..."

"As for the bank, it will continue working as usual together with all its subsidiaries and fringe organizations," Bakhmutova said. "All shareholders retain their stock and ability to exert influence appropriate to it."

"Everything has been done by the law," Justice Minister Zagipa Baliyeva confirmed.

Market uncertainty

Reflecting uncertainty over Kazakhstans highly leveraged banks, the cost of insuring Kazakh debt in the credit default swaps market shot up on February 2, with five-year CDS quoted around 200 basis points wider than on January 30, to close at 950-1050.

Like most local banks, BTA has been grappling to survive in tighter credit conditions after the global crunch ended oil-producing Kazakhstan's double-digit economic growth and crippled its once-vibrant banking industry.

A looming recession is now a worry to President Nursultan Nazarbayev who, while being criticized in the West for brooking no dissent, has been popular at home due to rising incomes.

Ablyazov's departure heralds a shift of power in Kazakh business, a worrying trend for investors relying on continuity of policy and balance of power in the Kazakh economy.

The move is also a worry from a broader economic point of view at a time when oil prices are falling and the central bank is expected to embark on a gradual depreciation of the tenge.

"The market will... fret over the impact on the state's balance sheet from the latest bank bail-outs, and whether this will threaten to diminish the sovereign's war chest of forex reserve," RBS analysts wrote in a note.

Nationalization or a brief helping hand?

Thanks to years of uninterrupted economic boom and windfall oil revenues, Kazakhstan grew into Central Asia's biggest economy over past years and boasted growth of around 10 percent a year between 2000 and 2007.

The government, however, warned against describing the February 2 announcements as nationalization, saying it would acquire BTA shares only on a temporary basis.

"This measure is not nationalization, it is temporary according to existing Kazakh legislation which stipulates the government will eventually exit its shareholder holdings," the government statement said.

"Politics is likely to play an important role with regard to how the government handles its newly acquired stakes, in particular its large stake in BTA," said Costello of the Eurasia Group.

As a result, President Nazarbayev may be keen to sell a stake in BTA to Russia's state-controlled Sberbank given that the Kremlin is Kazakhstan's closest political and economic partner, according to Costello.

Indeed, Prime Minister Karim Masimov told a cabinet meeting earlier that Kazakhstan may sell part of its BTA stake once the transaction was over, adding the government was in talks with Russia's Sberbank on this.

SamrukKazyna Chairman Kairat Kalimbetov said that Russias Sberbank might become a BTA-Bank shareholder. "Preliminary negotiations with major investors, including the Russian Sberbank, are under way," he told ITAR-TASS.

A source close to the talks said a senior Sberbank management team had flown to Kazakhstan to discuss a potential takeover. Sberbank declined to comment.

Other banks affected

Kazkommertsbank, another major Kazakh bank, said that it received 120 billion tenge ($987.9m) from the SamrukKazyna fund last week.

The amount includes a six-month deposit of 36 billion tenge ($296.3m), "which is expected to be used for the acquisition of a 25% stake in the bank by SamrukKazyna during this period," Kazkommertsbank said.

The remaining 84 billion tenge ($691m) is to be deposited for 36 months and will be used to finance and re-finance the corporate clients of the bank in the production sector of the economy, including manufacturing, agriculture, infrastructure, oil and gas, and transport.

On January 30, Kazakh media reported unconfirmed reports that SamrukKazyna agreed to buy a 51 percent stake in Temirbank from BTA and take control of the bank. According to the news source, Anvar Seidenov, the former chairman of the central bank, has been tapped to head the bank, once the deal goes through.