From: Justin Burke (JBurke@sorosny.org)
Date: Wed Apr 09 2003 - 14:33:26 EDT
Kazakh National Bank chief against Russian rouble becoming common
currency
Text of report by Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency
Almaty, 8 April: Kazakh National Bank Chairman Grigoriy Marchenko is
ready to resign from his post if the Russian rouble becomes the single
currency of the single economic space (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and
Ukraine).
Grigoriy Marchenko is aware that declaring the Russian rouble as the
currency of the single economic space is, first of all, a political
issue.
"If the presidents [Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Nursultan Nazarbayev,
Vladimir Putin and Leonid Kuchma, respectively] and the parliaments of
our countries were to adopt such a political decision - damn
sovereignty, let the Russian rouble be [the common currency], let it be
so. Then I personally would not consider it to be the right one. I
personally will not deal with this," the chairman of the National Bank
said.
"The point is that when we are offered to make the Russian rouble our
single currency, that actually means delegating a part of the
sovereignty of the states to Russia. In exchange for what? For this sole
reason such a scenario is not an acceptable one," he said in an
interview with the [Kazakh] supplement of the Russian Izvestiya
[-Kazakhstan] newspaper today.
Grigoriy Marchenko believes that Russia's Central Bank's "past is not
faultless". Meanwhile, he mentioned the events of Black Tuesday in 1994
[when the rouble crashed] and the default in 1998.
He also fears that if the members of the single economic space were to
recognize the Russian rouble as a single currency, they "would not be
able to do anything, since they would have no levers to influence the
Russian institution".
"The Russian president [Vladimir Putin] appoints the management of the
Central Bank of Russia, and the [State] Duma approves it. Other
countries will have nothing to do with this. And what if, unexpectedly,
a new chairman (of the Central Bank of Russia - Interfax-Kazakhstan)
carries out a fourfold depreciation, as was the case in 1998, to help
exporters? And [the new chairman] starts a different monetary and credit
or [currency] rate policy," Marchenko said.
Meanwhile he mentioned the summer and autumn of 1993 when Kazakhstan was
"rudely driven out of the rouble zone".
According to Marchenko, in order to introduce a single currency of the
single economic space a supranational single central bank should be set
up "with a clear and transparent procedure" for appointing its chairman
and management with the offices of all the member states of this
process.
At the same time he does not agree that "Russia, since it is the biggest
country, should have more rights during voting".
In September, Russian, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus are expected to
sign an agreement to set up a single economic space. And politicians and
economists will continue discussions on the expediency, timeframe and
methods of introducing the single currency of the community.
Source: Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, Almaty, in Russian 1001 gmt 8
Apr 03
BBC Mon CAU 080403/jl/qu
|
