Debts of 500,000 Kazakhs to be wrote off

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said he will write off bad loans held by as much as a sixth of the central Asian country’s population, while signaling a sharp change in policy to end costly state bailouts of private banks.

The total cost of the debt-relief initiative is likely to come in at "a bit less than $1 billion," according to Tokayev. More than 3 million Kazakhs will get help to escape debts, he said. It is aimed at "people who find themselves in very difficult living circumstances," Bloomberg cited the Kazakh leader as saying.

In a decree published today, the presidential administration estimated that about 500,000 people can’t manage their debt. In 86% of the cases, the loans are less than 1 million tenge ($2,650), while the average is about 300,000 tenge.