National Bank Chief Accepts Toqayev's "Mediocre" Rating

President Qasym-Jomart Toqayev recently assessed the work of Kazakhstan's government economic block, delivering a less than favorable review, Orda.kz reports.

In his interview, Toqayev criticized all economic leaders, giving them a "satisfactory" rating.

National Bank Chair Timur Suleimenov acknowledged this criticism head-on.

Of course, the National Bank is also an economic agency. And the fact that the President gave us an 'ortasha' assessment - mediocre, I, naturally, do not single myself out from this. I think the entire economic block was given such an assessment. Of course, we perceive this criticism from the point of view of the National Bank. And not just as a perception, but as a call to action. Today, I spoke about the new measures that we have already taken, the new measures that we will take next week. These are precisely our steps to implement what the president said, Suleimenov told reporters at an Astana briefing.

When questioned about potentially reverting to a fixed exchange rate for the tenge, Suleimenov explained that such a move would undermine Kazakhstan's open economy and derail efforts to diversify.

A floating rate is the only way to avoid imbalance. Therefore, we do not consider measures for a fixed rate. We do not deny that any economist, any finance expert can have any opinion. We are not a monopoly in this area, but nevertheless, from our point of view, this is the wrong approach, deeply mistaken, which will lead to long-term negative economic consequences in ensuring industrial growth of our economy, the National Bank head concluded.

He also revealed that top managers were divided on the base rate.

We had a very heated discussion in the committee. There, one person equals one vote. And everyone expresses their opinion very openly. We had many 'hawks,' and they probably dominated this time. 'Hawks' are those who favor a stricter monetary policy, meaning they support raising the rate. While 'doves' are those who advocate for lowering it. This time there were no doves at all. Not a single committee member even considered suggesting that the rate should be lowered, Suleimenov explained.

He noted that the discussion focused solely on whether to raise or maintain the rate at its current level.

Original Author: Ilya Astakhov