In June 2016 the total volume of loans issued by the banking sector to the economy reached KZT12.5tn. However, despite a remarkable fall in new loans in January 2016 the total volume of new credits was up by 6.8% year on year in the first six months of 2016. The January fall was caused by, above all, restrictions the National Bank imposed on the release of liquidity to commercial banks in order to stabilise the exchange rate. As a result, in order to fulfil capital adequacy requirements banks wound down their loan programmes, reducing new loans by 53% compared to December 2015.
The cost of loans increased by 1.5 percentage points on average to 15.1% per year. At the same time, banks were less willing to issue new loans in June, too: the share of new loans fell from 7.2% in June 2015 to 6.6% in June 2016.
Loans became more expensive for companies operating in all sectors of the economy, with the highest interest rates recorded on loans to IT and telecom companies (16.4% on average). Despite the falling oil prices banks continued to consider mining companies as reliable borrowers, offering them loans at 10.7% per year.
New loans were increasingly attracted to the processing sector: banks issued new loans to the tune of KZT13.4 per KZT100 of outstanding loans. Banks were also traditionally less willing to loans the agricultural sector: the share of new loans accounted for a meagre 2.3% of total loans issued in the sector.
