Ten-year treasury bonds go on sale at Kazakh stock exchange

First transactions with 10-year special treasury bonds Meakam with a face value of 1,000 tenge (145.55 tenge for one dollar as of 28 April) were conducted in the state securities sector of the Kazakh Stock Exchange.
The annual interest rate of a half-year coupon on the bonds is 9.75 per cent, the exchange agency Irbis told Interfax on Wednesday . During tenders on the treasury bonds, four transactions involving 2,080,000 bonds costing 1.8bn tenge were conducted. The profitability of the bonds for redemption was set at 13.14 per cent per year with a redemption term of 2,438 days.
These were the first transactions at the KASE with such an extensive term of redemption ever conducted at an auction.
Meakam bonds were issued by the Kazakh Finance Ministry on 5 January 1998 to restructure the Kazakh government's debt to the National Bank of Kazakhstan on loans received in 1991-1997, whose nominal value totalled about 36.85bn tenge. The exchange rate as of late 1997 was some 75.5 tenge for one dollar.

Central Banker Calls Kazakhstan's Rating "Unjustifiably Low"
Kazakhstani National Bank Chairman Grigoriy Marchenko on Tuesday lashed out at international ratings agencies for Kazakhstan's "unjustifiably low" country ratings, some of which have not been changed since 1996.
"Some of our ratings are still as low as in 1996. This can hardly be explained," Marchenko told journalists at a press conference in Almaty. "It appears that ratings agencies lag behind fast-developing markets. Besides, they are very conservative."
Standard & Poor's and Fitch has assigned Kazakhstan a BB- long-term rating. Moody's Investor Service lowered its rating by one grade to B1 in 1996. Marchenko expressed concern that Western analysts frequently fail to distinguish the progress Kazakhstan has made in recent years, instead tending to associate the republic with its less successful neighbours.
"Being part of the CIS, it is sometimes difficult to prove to outsiders that we have outstripped our neighbours in many ways," Marchenko said.
Marchenko went on to list Kazakhstan's many achievements since 1996, including consolidation of the banking sector, pension system reforms and a rapidly developing securities market. The central bank chief also noted that improvements in the oil and gas sector, the foundation of the republican economy, including the recent launch of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's Tengiz-Novorossiisk pipeline and the recent discoveries on the Kazakhstani Caspian shelf, signal good things for the nation's economic fortunes.
At the same time, Marchenko admitted that faster than expected inflation, the current softness in the national currency and fast-growing imports pose potential pitfalls, but expressed hope that international ratings agencies would nonetheless consider changing their assessments.
"We hope for a rating upgrade. Let's wait until the end of the year," he said.

Assume the investment rating were to be suddenly improved.

Government could raise export tariffs on oil

The Russian government believes it is necessary to raise taxes on the country's oil industry, declared the First Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Ulyukayev.
In spite of the powerful energy lobby in the Russian parliament, the government has the political will to tackle Russia's oil and gas barons. Increasing export tariffs on oil does not require the Duma's approval, and that is why it would be simple to do this, Ulyukayev considers.
"An increase of at least 10% in export tariffs would imply substantial progress," he declared. At the moment, the government collects approximately 30% of the revenues of oil companies in the form of taxes, which is substantially lower than in Europe.
Ulyukayev also reported that economic growth rates in Russia were becoming more moderate. This year's economic growth was planned at the level of 4%, whereas last year, it was estimated by the government and Central Bank to be at the 7.7% level.
"Last year was a unique year for Russia in the sense of a combination of factors promoting economic growth," he declared.
In 2000 the average price of Russian crude on the world market stood at approximately $25 per barrel, whereas the country's budget had estimated a $19 per barrel level.