Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said Wednesday that his country had no plans to repeat last year's shock currency devaluation, as low oil prices and a weak Russian ruble batter the economy. He spoke two days after ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgraded the energy-dependent Central Asian country's credit rating to BBB from BBB+ because of the plunging oil prices.
Speaking at a government meeting, Nazarbayev admitted that the "general global situation" including depressed commodity prices and a Russian ruble that has lost half its value against the dollar in the past year have hurt Kazakhstan, Russia's neighbour to the south. "We will not hide anything. There will be difficulties," Nazarbayev said. He ordered his government to cut spending by 10 percent without affecting social outlays and called on local companies to "respect common interests" by holding deposits in the national tenge currency. In February 2014, Kazakhstan devalued the tenge by 19 percent against the dollar overnight, triggering protests in the country's largest city Almaty.