Inflation to decline in Kazakhstan
By Kamila Aliyeva
Kazakhstan's National Bank forecasts 5-7 percent inflation in the country by the end of this year.
This was stated by Chairman of the National Bank Daniyar Akishev during his visit to Moscow for the participation in a regular session of the Advisory Board on Monetary Policy of the EAEU Member States, Kazinform reported.
He pointed out that the decision to reduce the base rate was motivated by the positive results achieved in 2017 and favorable expectations about the development of the situation over during the current year.
“This year, we made the decision to lower the base rate because of the improvement in the anticipated inflation rate amid the persistence of positive trends in foreign markets and trading partner countries, as well as the decline in the inflation expectations that continued in 2018," Akishev noted.
In addition, he underlined that the Kazakh central bank continues targeting the money-and-credit neutrality.
“The current trajectory of the base rate level was formed with due regard for our short and medium-term inflation forecasts and makes it possible to attain the 5-7 percent and 4-6 percent target inflation rates by the end of this year and 2019,” the chairman said.
The inflation rate in Kazakhstan in February 2018 amounted to 0.7 percent compared with the previous month and 1.3 percent compared to December 2017.
He went on to speak about the intensive development of new types of services through Internet banking and mobile applications.
Last year, the growth in payments through the Internet and mobile banking doubled compared to 2016, according to the chairman.
New biometric technologies have appeared and are spreading, in which access to financial services is provided with fingerprints, voice and face recognition, new services are being introduced to open an online account, new products on online insurance appear on the insurance market.
Systemic work is underway to transfer financial organizations to electronic interaction with state bodies to exclude paper documents required from clients in the process of providing financial services.
“Digitalization is also widely used in the activities of the regulator itself, for example, to optimize the collection and analysis of reporting from market entities, communications with the public,” he noted.
The block chain technology is used to record information about transactions with securities, according to Akishev.
“Each transaction is written in an inseparable chain of blocks in the form of a distributed registry, which ensures its safety and stability. Moreover, within the framework of the Invest Online system, the National Bank for the first time carried out the issue of electronic money, which will be used for settlements on transactions with securities,” he added.
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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva
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