Kazakhstan to Shut Private Exchange Bureaus

The National Bank of Kazakhstan is planning to amend existing legislation in order to cancel the licenses of private, non-bank currency exchange bureaus trading in foreign currencies. National Bank head Grigoriy Marchenko believes that the bureaus have been exploiting the February tenge devaluation in order to extract excess profits, and that the changes are necessary in order to stabilize the retail currency markets.

“Some private currency exchange bureaus were generating rumors about the newly devalued tenge. Moreover, a few bureaus were engaging in illegal sales of foreign currency in cash at overpriced rates overnight,” Marchenko told Kazakhstan’s TV Channel 31.

Naysayers, however, point to negatives such as the increased burden on bank exchange windows and the likelihood of a flourishing black market, and question whether the benefits would outweigh them.

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