News brief: Marchenko may step down soon

The head of the central bank of Kazakhstan, Grigorii Marchenko, may step down by the end of the year, ostensibly for personal reasons, reports a business weekly, Kursiv’.  His potential successors include Finance Minister Bolat Zhamyshev and Deputy Prime Minister Kairat Kelymbetov.

The president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbaev, appointed Marchenko in early 2009, when overvaluation of the tenge had led to rapid drains of the National Bank’s reserves of foreign currency.  Within days of his appointment, Marchenko devalued the tenge by 25%.  At that time, he vowed to hold the exchange rate to about 150 tenge to the United States dollar.  In the past two years, the tenge has depreciated steadily to an exchange rate of about 153.

Any central banker will eventually collect a respectable number of enemies.  The 2009 devaluation probably protected the tenge from a devastating speculative attack, but it also reduced the wealth of tenge-holders by a fourth (in terms of purchasing power over foreign products).  Particularly caught between a rock and a hard place were commercial banks with dollar-denominated debts and tenge-denominated wealth.    

This year, Marchenko ran afoul of what Americans call the “third rail of politics” – pension reform.  (The term stems from Washington's subway system, in which the middle rail is lethally electric.)  The government suddenly “unified” private pension funds into one to be managed by the National Bank.  Some contributors to the private funds wondered if they would ever see their money again.  And a proposal to delay the retirement age of women cost one labor minister his head.

In addition to his current tenure, Marchenko headed the National Bank in the years following the collapse of the Russian ruble, 1999-2004.  He was replaced by Anvar Saydenov, whom he replaced in turn in 2009. --Leon Taylor tayloralmaty@gmail.com

References

Yana Lee.  Marchenko sdelal svoi delo.  Kursiv’.  July 18, 2013.