Publications

Belarus aims to comply with the FATF recommendations in the regulation of anti-money laundering issues, despite the fact that Belarus is not a member of the FATF.

Kazakhstan chapter of the twelfth edition of The Banking Regulation Review which considers high-level insight across the legal and regulatory requirements applicable to banks.

The whole process of introduction of financial services based on technological innovation to the financial market is called Fintech. Upon the introduction of new products and services to the market with the help of Fintech, financial institutes become able to conduct a wider range of activities at a lower expense.

In 2009, Kazakhstan was the first county of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to introduce Islamic banking and Islamic securities. Still, however, little progress has been made in terms of the development of the Islamic finance industry, apparently because of inherent deficiencies in the Kazakh law which has civil law jurisdiction and does not recognize many international legal concepts.

Kazakhstan is the largest economy in Central Asia and home to more than 18 million people. As a country rich in coal, oil, natural gas and uranium, Kazakhstan’s economic focus remains firmly on its industrial sector and the extraction and processing of its natural resources.

The recent outbreak of COVID-19 pandemia has not created any new issues for Kazakhstan’s economy, it has just uncovered the existing ones. Long before the pandemia it was already clear to the Kazakh Government that “oil era” is coming to an end and new instruments shall be developed to attract money to the country. As a response to the challenging reality, the Kazakh Government has to apply non - resource based means to boost the economy. Creating a strong capital market that will attract regional and foreign investors to Kazakhstan is one of such non - resource based measures.

The Kazakh gas market continues to be organized on the basis of central command and control, and quasi-monopolistic principles, with KazMunayGas (KMG) as the state owned and vertically integrated oil and gas company dominating gas production, supply and transportation through its direct and indirect subsidiaries.

The development of FinTech has leapfrogged for the recent two years in Uzbekistan. Concretely, emission and sale of electronic money ("E-money ") was not regulated by the Uzbek legislation in the past. Herewith the very idea of creating a special electronic payment system was not feasible until 2020.

In Belarus, the circulation of electronic money issued either by residents of Belarus or non-residents is allowed.

Despite the attempts of the government of Kazakhstan to make its Islamic finance market more attractive, Islamic products are still rarely used in Kazakhstan. Currently, according to the National Bank of Kazakhstan, the share of Islamic banking assets in Kazakhstan represents an insignificant part of the total assets of the banking sector: 0.21% (a year earlier the share was 0.16%). According to the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC), the target to achieve by 2025 is 5–7%

In 2020, Kazakhstan faces a hurricane in the form of the impact consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the plunge in the price of oil to a 20-year low, including, among others, decreased economic activities, devaluation of the local currency (tenge), reduced foreign direct investments in risky markets and shrinking state budgets.

M&A market in Kazakhstan remained strong in 2019, as it was in 2018. Activity was largely driven by ongoing consolidation of Kazakh banks because of the increased capitalisation requirements of the financial regulator, consolidation in the telecommunications sector and acquisitions in the IT sector.