ASTANA (TCA) — The National Bank of Kazakhstan has launched a blockchain-based mobile securities trading application which it hopes will allow local citizens to become more involved in the capital markets by simplifying access to it, RFE/RL reports.
Daniyar Akishev, head of Kazakhstan’s National Bank, said that the new mobile application, Invest Online, will allow people to buy discount notes of the central bank.
The app works 24 hours a day without any charges or taxes levied and all transactions are transparent and free, Akishev said while presenting Invest Online in the country’s largest city, Almaty, on March 27.
The oil-rich Central Asian nation’s stock and bond markets are dominated by a handful of institutional investors, with only 109,000 retail investor accounts in the nation of 18 million.
The Kazakh government hopes to change that by selling stakes in some of the biggest state-controlled companies on the local market.
The government is currently pushing a new wave of privatization of large state-owned companies, including stakes in the national oil and gas company, national atomic company, and other major enterprises.
At the moment, though, app users can only buy the central bank’s own one-year discount notes denominated in the local tenge currency that yield 8.5 percent. Tenge deposits at local banks offer returns of 10 to 14 percent.
