Kazakhstan Currency (KZT)

The Tenge, Kazakh currency, divided into 100 Tiyins, was introduced in November 1993 to replace the ruble, which came as a legacy of the Soviet Union. It was created after Russia expelled several countries in the area of ??the ruble. Incidentally, in Russia where you find the meaning of the word Tenge, in the language of the czars, it means "money". This is loosely related to the word den'gi, which was borrowed from Turkic.

In Kazakh and other languages ??of Turkish origin, tenge means "balance".

Coins are arranged 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 tenge coins.

The currency came after the failure of several former Soviet republics to create a common currency, including Russia itself. The negotiations, which have not advanced for several reasons, among them political will, consensus on monetary and fiscal targets, and even the lack of a proper applicable law. All were very distant at that time.

The emergence of tenge came in 1993, when it was launched as the national currency of Kazakhstan, quoted the following rate: 1 tenge for every 500 rubles. A curiosity: for not having proper structure at the time, the first printing of banknotes and coinage was not made in Kazakhstan. Notes, for example, were created in a printing factory in the UK and the first coins were minted in Germany.

Today Kazakhstan is the 48th largest economy in the world. As its territory is the largest among the former Soviet territories outside Russia, it got an enormous amount of fossil fuels and deposits of minerals and metals at the time of independence.

The largest deposits and reserves are oil and natural gas located in the Caspian Sea and its coal reserves in the coal basin of Karaganda, central region of the country. As for the oil reserves are estimated at something close to 12-17 billion tonnes (which would give Kazakhstan the owner of title of the 5th largest reserves in the world, or the 2nd place among the countries that are not part of OPEC , behind Russia, the first place). Besides the large amount of oil, the country has the world's fifth largest uranium reserves, essential for the defense industry and for generating electricity in nuclear power plants, used in a number of countries on all continents.

The industrial sector of Kazakhstan is focused primarily on the extraction and processing of this natural resources. But not only this, the country also has an important agricultural sector which highlights the grain and livestock.

Thanks to these reserves, economic reform has occurred, the good harvests, and the growth of foreign investment, the country has enjoyed double-digit growth in 2000 and 2001, and about 8% or more per year between 2002 and 2007. Kazakhstan is currently one of the best countries in the world to invest, according to the World Bank.

The momentum experienced by the country fell in 2008, when GDP plunged 2.4% thanks to oil price declines and metals, and problems in the banking sector that followed the global financial crisis.

In early 2014, the Kazakh National Bank decided to devalue the tenge in the range of 19% against the dollar due to the weakening of the Russian ruble. Today $ 1 equals 243 tenge.