National Bank to Track Official Exchange Rates for More Foreign Currencies

Kazakhstan’s National Bank plans to expand the list of currencies for which it sets an official exchange rate against the tenge, Orda.kz reports. The number of countries whose national currencies are monitored by the regulator will increase from 39 to 48.

The additional currencies include the Vietnamese dong, Egyptian pound, Israeli shekel, Indonesian rupiah, Pakistani rupee, Qatari riyal, Omani rial, Mongolian tögrög, and Romanian leu.

The National Bank says it analyzed Kazakhstan’s trade turnover over the past five years, tracked which currencies are most often used in transactions, and also reviewed the history of requests for official exchange rates, including requests from private individuals.

The explanatory note to the draft National Bank resolution, published on the open legal acts portal, says the changes are needed to bring the previous rules into line with the new version of the Constitution, the Tax Code, the Digital Code, and the law on the National Bank. At the same time, the Digital Code itself does not mention foreign currencies or their exchange rates against the tenge.

The official dollar-tenge exchange rate corresponds to the rate on KASE at 15:30 on the previous business day. The value of other currencies is determined through the cross-rate to the dollar, based on their dollar exchange rate and the dollar’s rate against the tenge, at 16:00 on the previous day. The official values of the new currencies will also be determined through cross-rates.

Original author: Alexey Afonsky

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