Kazakhstan: Kazakh banks receive creditor and state support

	state support for BTA

Kazakhstan has to undertake a delicate balancing act. The state is trying to put the country’s most vulnerable banks back on their feet while not provoking a run on them or exhausting its $40 billion in foreign reserves. But bond investors are unhappy that a multi-billion dollar government bailout could leave part of the burden from an international debt crisis at two of the biggest banks on their shoulders. Also, a group of north American and western European bankers’ associations wrote to Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev at the end of October, raising concerns at how trade finance could be subject to the banks’ restructuring plans.