Ancora una Bloomberg che riporta altri elementi interessanti.
Ad esempio, secondo questa fonte, la offerta di cessione di una quota di controllo di BTA alla russa Sberbank sarebbe dovuta, nelle parole del CEO della stessa BTA, al fatto che il Governo kazako "non ha denaro extra per ulteriori investimenti".
Circa la possibilità che il tenge si svaluti ancora, quasi nessuno fra i commentatori reputa sufficiente la mossa di qualche giorno fa. I target vanno da una svalutazione ulteriore nell'ordine di un 20% ad un estremo che postula un altro 100%.
Roubini ipotizza che possano ripetersi le vicende islandesi...
Kazakhstan Devalues Tenge 18%, Turns to Russia for Bank Rescue
By Nariman Gizitdinov
Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Kazakhstan’s central bank devalued the tenge by 18 percent, joining Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in abandoning attempts to prop up exchange rates as currency reserves dwindle and the economy staggers.
Central Asia’s largest energy producer will keep its currency at about 150 tenge to the dollar, the Almaty-based National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan said in a statement. The central bank is letting the tenge weaken for the first time since it started managing the currency in 2007, after draining $3.5 billion, or 16 percent, of its foreign-exchange reserves.
Two decades after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Kazakhstan’s economic growth is slowing to 1 percent from 10 percent and the nation’s four biggest banks have been seized by the government as part of an emergency program costing the equivalent to 20 percent of gross domestic product.
Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been president since communism ended, is looking to Moscow to take over its biggest bank, just as Russia struggles to arrest a 35 percent devaluation and Ukraine battles a 47 percent drop.
“The situation is so similar to Russia, being highly dependent on oil prices and the banking sector being weak due to large foreign debt and the collapse of the housing market,” said
Gaelle Blanchard, an emerging-market analyst at Societe Generale SA in London, who expects the tenge to fall to 170 per dollar.
The devaluation will make it harder for banks to repay their $40 billion of foreign debt, of which $19 billion is due this year, said Nordea Bank AB, the Nordic region’s biggest bank. Stocks rallied 14 percent, the
most in three months, led by commodity exporters.
Oil Reserves
The tenge fell 22 percent to 149.6650, from 122.32 per dollar yesterday. The central bank said the currency may fluctuate about 3 percent either side of its target rate.
Kazakhstan, the second-largest oil producer among the former Soviet republics after Russia, has 3.2 percent of the world’s oil reserves according to BP Plc. The government expects economic growth will slow to 1 percent this year, after a decade-long boom in which the economy expanded an average of 10 percent a year. Prices for new residential real estate dropped 9 percent last year.
Profit for all of Kazakhstan’s 37 banks plunged 93 percent to 15.4 billion tenge in 2008 from a year earlier as they boosted reserves to protect against delinquent loans, according to the Agency for Financial Supervision. The lenders’ debt to foreigners was 4.688 trillion tenge as of Jan. 1.
Bank Bailout
The government agreed on Feb. 2 to pay BTA Bank, the country’s biggest lender, 251 billion tenge for 78 percent of shares. The government may sell half of the controlling stake to OAO Sberbank as it “doesn’t have any extra money” to invest, Arman Dunayev, former deputy head of the state’s National Wellbeing Fund and now a chairman of BTA Bank, said at the time.
Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, is studying the offer, Chief Executive Officer
German Gref said at a conference in Moscow today.
Russia is spending $240 billion bailing out its own banks and boosting the economy, while draining more than a third of foreign-currency reserves to stem a 35 percent plunge in the ruble against the dollar in the last six months. Fitch Ratings downgraded Russia for the first time in more than a decade today because of falling oil prices, dwindling foreign-currency reserves and record capital flight.
Kazakhstan may wind up calling on the International Monetary Fund if banks are unable to repay foreign debt after the devaluation, said Societe Generale’s Blanchard. Ainagul Shakirova, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister
Karim Masimov, declined to comment on any possible request for IMF help.
Iceland Remembered
Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who forecast the U.S. recession two years ago, said the amount of foreign debt accumulated by banks puts Kazakhstan at risk of a crisis similar to Iceland, which had to be rescued by the International Monetary Fund as lenders failed.
“Kazakhstan looks like a small version of Iceland with its banks borrowing from abroad,” Roubini said in an interview today. “A currency crisis becomes a banking crisis, it becomes a housing crisis, a sovereign-debt crisis, it becomes a corporate crisis because each one of these agents in these economies has a large amount of foreign liabilities.”
The government is bailing out the country’s four biggest banks, including Halyk Savings Bank, which is majority owned by President Nazarbayev’s daughter and son-in-law,
Timur Kulibayev. Kulibayev was appointed deputy head of the National Wellbeing Fund, the primary conduit for the bank bailouts, in October.
The bailout fund agreed on Feb. 2 to deposit about $200 million in Alliance Bank, the nation’s fourth-largest, based on a proposal to buy a 76 percent stake for 100 tenge from owner Seimar Alliance Financial Corp.
‘Getting Clarity’
Kazakhstan wasn’t able to devalue its currency “before getting clarity with the two banks, as they just will not bear it,” Central bank Chairman
Grigori Marchenko said at a press briefing today in Almaty.
The $4 billion rescue is one part of an emergency spending program equivalent to almost 20 percent of gross domestic product, at 2.2 trillion tenge.
The government will draw $10 billion from a National Oil Fund, created to guard against a decline in crude prices.
Kazakh stocks rallied for the first time in 13 days, led by commodity producers, while banks declined. Kazakhmys Plc, the country’s biggest copper mining company, climbed as much as 15 percent, and KazMunaiGas Exploration Production, the London- traded unit of Kazakhstan’s state energy company, rose 5.5 percent, its biggest gain in two weeks.
Halyk Savings Bank fell 7.1 percent, its biggest drop in two months. The shares lost 86 percent in the past year.
Rising Debt Risk
Kazakhstan’s debt risk rose to the highest in more than three months, credit-default swap prices show.
The cost to protect against a default by Kazakhstan rose 74 basis points to 1,187 basis points, the highest since Oct. 24, according prices from CMA Datavision in London. The default swaps, which rise as perceptions of credit quality deteriorate, have surged more than 300 basis points in the past week.
Credit-default swaps tied to Kazakhstan are the fourth most expensive worldwide, after Ukraine, Argentina and Venezuela, Bloomberg data show.
Credit-default swaps, conceived to protect bondholders against default, pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a borrower fail to adhere to its debt agreements. A basis point is equivalent to $1,000 on a contract protecting $10 million of debt.
Kazakhstan depleted $1.6 billion, or 6 percent, of its foreign-currency and gold reserves in January as it sold dollars to protect the tenge, according to central bank data today.
Saving Reserves
The central bank devalued the tenge “to save foreign- currency
reserves and support local producers’ competitiveness,” policy makers said in a statement today.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecast a 19 percent devaluation yesterday. The currency may drop to about 175 per dollar by the end of March, analysts at Societe Generale said on Feb. 2. Nomura Holdings Inc. said last month Kazakhstan should allow a 50 percent decline.
“The pressure will be there at 150 for the tenge and they’ll have to devalue again,” said
Lars Christensen, head of emerging- market strategy in Copenhagen at Danske Bank A/S. “As long as oil prices remain subdued, there is nothing telling you to buy the tenge and there will be pressure there.” The central bank resumed management of the tenge in 2007, nine years after letting it trade freely, as the U.S. subprime-mortgage crisis starved the nation’s banks of credit and slowed the country’s economy.
‘Fantasy’ Talk
“We will hold the announced corridor,” Marchenko said today. “Talk that the exchange rate will be 180 tenge per dollar in two months and 300 tenge at the end of this year is not truth, but fantasy.”
The government aid will help the banks withstand the effect of the devaluation, he said.
The central bank also announced a lowering of its
refinancing rate to 9.5 percent from tomorrow, and reduction in its reserve requirement for banks by 0.5 percentage point. The reduction will free up about 50 billion tenge ($404.9 million) for lending from March 3, Marchenko said.
“Kazakhstan most probably may not need to provide additional help to commercial banks with their payment of foreign debt after devaluation,” Marchenko said. “If the situation will become worse the state may step in to help banks,” he added, without elaborating.
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