The international rating agency Standard & Poor’s has carried out a review of Banking Industry Country Risk Assessment (BICRA) in Kazakhstan and moved it to group 8.Other countries in group 8 are Azerbaijan, Russia, Hungary, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Bolivia, Croatia, Paraguay, Sri Lanka and Lebanon.
The main reasons for the increased risk is a tight liquidity in the banking system owing to high deposit dollarization, aggressive lending, weak underwriting standards and rising credit losses over the past four years, low risk-adjusted returns of the banking system, with narrowing margins and elevated costs. In addition, analysts pointed out that there is a weak payment culture and rule of law in the country, Trend reports.
