ASTANA (Interfax-Kazakhstan) – Kazakh National Bank has extended a loan to Tsesnabank, the country’s second-largest bank, after a bailout it received last year failed to restore it to health, Bloomberg reports referring to people with knowledge of the matter.

According to calculations made by Fitch based on banks’ official data, Tsesnabank’s liquid assets fell 30.3% in the second quarter, the biggest decline among top 10 Kazakh banks. Total liquid assets of the banking sector grew 1.5% in the same period.

Last week, Tsesnabank, second Kazakhstan lender by assets, along with Eurasian Bank, have posted sharp drops in liquid assets in the second quarter, though the central bank said they were meeting regulatory requirements. Both banks, which have assets of about $5.8 bln and $2.7 bln respectively, had said the reductions in liquidity, defined as the readily available funds such as cash deposits which a bank can use to pay its debts, had been planned.

Since 2015, Kazakhstan banking system has been volatile when global oil prices plunged and the local property market crashed, leaving many lenders saddled with bad debt and devalued collateral. Last year, Astana spent $7.5 bln buying bad loans from one bank, and two other small Kazakh banks had their licences revoked last week for repeated breaches of central bank regulations.