ALMATY (Interfax-Kazakhstan) – The Kazakh Parliament (Majilis) approved the amendment to the draft law On Amendments to Legislative Acts on Advertising in the second and final reading on Wednesday.

Last January, the Kazakh government has adopted a bill developed by the National Bank of Kazakhstan to reduce transactions in the country in foreign currency. The bill is designed to expand the coverage of statistical monitoring of foreign exchange transactions and reduce the use of foreign currency in Kazakhstan. One of the important changes and additions envisioned by the bill is strengthening currency control over transactions aimed against moving funds outside the country.

The National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) controls the tenge, which is convertible with the U.S. dollar, via a managed float. In 1996, Kazakhstan joined Article 8 of the International Monetary Fund Charter, which calls for full convertibility and the removal of all controls on current account transactions. After the tenge devaluation on February 4, 2009, the NBK returned to a managed-float exchange-rate regime and, throughout 2009, maintained a tenge exchange rate in the range of 150 tenge per U.S. dollar (+/- 3%). In February 2014, NBK devalued the tenge from 155 to 185 to the U.S. dollar, citing growing speculative pressure on the tenge and other emerging currencies, volatile world commodity markets, and the depreciation of the Russian ruble. In July 2015, the National Bank revised its fluctuation corridor for the tenge to between 170-198 to the U.S. dollar and maintained promises to pursue policies that mitigate sharp fluctuations and short-term exchange rate volatility. On 19 August, 2015 the tenge devalued to the upper end of this range.