Head of the Presidential Administration Karim Massimov, Chairman of the National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan Grigory Marchenko, Deputy Prime Minister Kairat Kelimbetov and Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Bakhyt Sultanov attended the meeting.
“Considering a traditional annual report on the activities of the National Bank, we see that today all the macroeconomic indicators of the country’s development are normal. An observable growth of the economy by 6 percent with current financial instability in the world could be considered as optimal. Inflation has not exceeded the fixed limit; rate of exchange has been stable. We also observe the growth of lending to the economy and capitalization of banks,” the President emphasized.
Nursultan Nazarbayev also pointed out that despite this there are a number of issues on which corresponding decisions have to be made.
“Stable growth of the economy remains a main task. The Government and the National Bank should work to increase economic growth rate. For this, it is necessary to present coordinated proposals. Moreover, we have an issue of the pension system improvement on the agenda, in particular, creation of a single pension fund,” the President highlighted.
Grigory Marchenko noted that as a result of the year 2012 the major macroeconomic figures are positive.
“For example, with regard to banking sector, the number of loans has increased by 13 percent. Their total growth amounted to 29 percent over the last two years. The level of loans in Europe has not increased; it has declined by 10 percent in the USA and by 5 percent in Great Britain. Besides, the deposits of the population have increased by 23.8 percent, insurance premiums – by 20.5 percent, and assets of the pension funds have increased by 20.2 percent,” the Chairman of the National Bank stressed.
During the meeting, Grigory Marchenko reported to the President on the work of the National Bank to maintain price stability, new transmission mechanism of loan and monetary policy and further improvement of its instruments, diversification of the international assets, as well as the issues of foreign loan by the second-tier banks.
Following the meeting, the President gave concrete instructions on the need for keeping the inflation rate within the forecast corridor and further development of the banking sector. Besides, the President urged together with the Government to draft the proposals on the creation of a common system of the service of payment cards on the basis of a single operator and to strengthen the work on the creation of CES taking into account the interests of Kazakhstan.
