Kazakhstan authorities plan to enter Russia’s bond market with state securities this year, the country’s First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alikhan Smailov told reporters on Wednesday, according to Izvestia.
“This year we plan to enter the Russian bond market with at least $500 million,” he said, adding that on the Russian market “rates are cheaper, while the currency risk is minimum.”
The plan is to enter the Russian bond market “within a month or two,” Smailov clarified. “The issue is about Kazakhstan’s treasury bonds,” he noted.
The Central Asian nation and a former Soviet republic have until now mostly borrowed on Western markets and sold its most recent euro-denominated bond last September.
Both Russia and Kazakhstan are oil exporters and their currencies – the rouble RUB= and tenge KZT=, respectively – often move in the same direction against the dollar.
Earlier in February, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, after talks with Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi, urged Kazakhstan to work with American companies. After the meeting, Tleuberdi told reporters that the United States is seen as a source of investment, new technologies, knowledge, as well as world-class standards.
