Kazakhstan's current account swings into deficit in Jan-Sep

By bne IntelliNews November 12, 2015

Current account deficit amounted to $4.042bn in Kazakhstan in January-September against a surplus of $6.062bn in the same period of previous year, the preliminary data of the National Bank of Kazakhstan shows.

The drop in the price of oil, the country's main export commodity, is blamed for the deficit. A delay in the devaluation of the national currency, the tenge, is also partly to blame for the deficit as a strong tenge encouraged a shopping spree in Russia and other neigbouring countries, while demand for Kazakh exports fell because of a slowdown in major trading partners - Russia, the EU and China.

According to foreign trade figures for the first nine months of the year, trade surplus plummeted by 65% to $10.7bn against $30.6bn in January-September 2014, as exports fell faster than imports - 42% against 20%.

In 2014, Kazakhstan posted a full-year current account surplus of $5.994bn.

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