Kazakh National Bank sells $1 bln to support tenge, not planning more interventions for now

ALMATY. Nov 29 (Interfax) - The National Bank of Kazakhstan is not planning interventions in the currency market before the end of the year if it does not see any sharp changes, National Bank Governor Timur Suleimenov said at a briefing on Friday.

"As I have already said, if there are no sharp changes, if there are no speculative, unjustified fluctuations based on fundamental or market factors, we do not plan to intervene. We only do this as a last resort," he said.

The Central Bank carried out interventions by selling $1 billion amid a sharp fall in the tenge's exchange rate with the dollar beginning on November 15-16, Suleimenov said.

"We conducted interventions totaling $1 billion. We carried out these interventions from November 15-16 up until yesterday," he said.

The interventions were necessary to ensure a soft landing for the exchange rate and so that the tenge "came down more gently", he said.

"Without this [the interventions], the situation would be far more unstable. We're not intervening now; we hope the market will find a balance on its own," he said.

The preconditions for a sharp fall in the exchange rate are absent, he said.

"There is no risk of a national currency collapse. A collapse is when the exchange rate drops by half in one day. As I mentioned, our rate of 495-498 [tenge per $1] has been stable over the past two weeks. That's 2%, not a collapse," he said.

Increased demand for foreign currency from economic agents as well as limited supply, partly due to the exchange rate surpassing the psychologically significant level of 500 tenge per $1 this week, have been observed on the Kazakh foreign exchange market.

The National Bank carried out interventions in February-March 2022.

The official exchange rate on November 29 is 513 tenge/$1.