ALMATY (Reuters) -Kazakhstan’s central bank said on Friday it sold $240 million from its foreign currency reserves on the domestic market on Jan. 12-13 to support the local tenge currency against the backdrop of recent unrest in the country.
The bank said its sales accounted for about half of the total market activity on those days when trading resumed after a long break.
Earlier on Friday, the bank said that for the whole month of December its foreign currency sales amounted to $252 million.
For most of 2021, the central bank made no sales from its own funds, although sales from the National Fund and those by state-owned companies, which also prop up the local tenge currency, amounted to almost $1 billion a month.
(Reporting by Mariya Gordeyeva; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Shounak Dasgupta)
