Foreign financial markets are still closed to banks of developing countries, according to financiers. Global markets woes and problems in the Eurozone discourage investors to invest in emerging economies. At the same time, according to both foreign and Kazakh experts, investment in capitals of developing countries recover faster than those in developed ones.

Foreign loan markets will continue to be limited for domestic banks in the next two years, market participants said in a statement at a regular meeting of the business journalists club. According to statistics by the National Bank, the banking system’s debt before foreign investors fell by 27% in 2011. Thus, this rate is currently slightly higher than 14.5 billion US dollars.

Nurbek Ayazbayev, MANAGING DIRECTOR, EURASIAN BANK JSC:
-At present, the access to external borrowing remains expensive due to the fact that the debt crisis in the Eurozone and investors’ concerns over the problem areas in the EU, such as Greece and Spain, do not add up to their optimism.

Experts say that debt reduction was due to timely action taken by the Kazakh Government, including an injection of liquidity and easing requirements during the crisis. Then the regulator slowly began to tighten borrowing standards and conduct more aggressive stress tests.

Michael Eggleton, CHAIRMAN OF MANAGEMENT BOARD, EURASIAN BANK JSC:
-I think that the banking sector should survive quite nicely. And I think that because mainly over the last three years the Kazakh banks have not borrowed lots of money from abroad and from investors, they’ve been sustaining their growth organically.

According to the National Bank’s data, the main tools of external borrowing by banks lies in mobilizing funding by issuing bonds, attracting syndicated and bilateral loans, as well as trade and structured finance instruments.

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