ASTANA (TCA) — In the near future, the Government of Kazakhstan and the National Bank will take new measures to support the country’s agricultural sector, the official website of the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan reported.
“Today under the Third Wave of Modernization of the economy and the creation of a new growth model, the importance of the Agro-Industrial Complex is growing. This is a strategic industry. The potential locomotive. Our common goal is to increase labor productivity and export of processed agricultural products by 2.5 times in the next five years. To this end, we are working together on the availability of financing for farmers, the availability of markets and the development of exports,” the Government of Kazakhstan and the National Bank said in a joint statement on new measures of additional support for the agricultural sector on September 14.
The statement said that the situation on the world markets is unstable and rapidly changing. The agrarian sector, which has a load in the form of foreign currency loans, is developing under the pressure of external shocks. Therefore, the Government and the National Bank have developed a package of additional measures to support agricultural producers and the agrarian sector as a whole.
The main goal is to create conditions for accelerated growth of the sector in a new reality, not to slow down the pace of modernization, to expand existing “narrow” places, the statement said.
Among the measures, special attention is paid to reducing the debt burden of agribusiness enterprises.
“Our tool is de-dollarization and restructuration of Kazagro Holding’s requirements, using new tools of the State Program of Agro-Industrial Complex.
“The package of measures includes a number of financial instruments that stimulate the efficiency of financial institutions, including partner banks in implementing agro-industrial development programs.
“The active participant in the implementation of the projects of the Agribusiness 2020 program and government programs to support entrepreneurship is Tsesnabank. It accounts for more than 65% of the lending industry. In this regard, Tsesnabank, in conjunction with the KazAgro Holding, has begun work on the issue of refinancing the issued foreign currency loans and increasing their terms.
“As part of this work, the Government and the National Bank are working out a mechanism for the purchase of a portfolio of agricultural loans from Tsesnabank worth 450 billion tenge. This will ensure the financial recovery of enterprises of the agro-industrial sector — the borrowers of the bank, and also strengthen the financial stability of Tsesnabank. The shareholders of Tsesnabank will take part in the recovery of borrowers at their own expense by capitalizing the bank.
“The implementation of these measures will protect the interests of domestic agricultural producers, increase lending and support the policy of modernization of the agricultural sector,” the statement said.
