The Bankers of post-soviet countries, please join us!

Dosim Satpaev

Since August, the banking sector of Kazakhstan has attracted a special attention from society, first of all, in the view of its financial stability. But the event that took place on 12th December indicates the optimism and trust in the future from the side of our banking structures.
In Almaty it was officially announced about the establishment of Eurasian club of Bankers. We should mention here that on 26th September of 2007, during the 8th Almaty Interbank Conference “High growth banking systems of CIS”, the initiator of which was the “Bank TuranAlem” (BTA), memorandum of this club’s establishment was accepted.
As it is known, the idea itself was made public by the President of Republic of Kazakhstan N.A. Nazarbaev in the economic forum held in St. Petersburg on 10th June of 2007. And already this week, the constituent agreement was signed not only by the trustworthy banks such as Bank TuranAlem, KazKom, Alliance Bank, and Bank CenterCredit, but also by the Association of financiers of Kazakhstan, Association of Russian banks and Financial-Banking group of CIS.
There could be several reasons for the establishment of this club. Particularly, despite the fact that there is a range of regional organizations in the territory of former Soviet Union, which has such functions as development of multilateral economic cooperation, not any of them has the opportunities to perform this function in full measure because of wide dispersion of directions of its activity and certain bureaucratization. On terms of globalization and on the verge of possible joining of Kazakhstan and other CIS countries in WTO, it becomes necessary to consolidate the efforts of different fields of economy in order to uphold and further your own corporative interests on regional and global levels. It also concerns the financial institutes of post-soviet states.
The finance and banking council of CIS countries, the subcommittee of interbank and investment cooperation between RF and RK, the International Coordinating Council of bank associations of CIS countries, Central and Eastern Europe, the Coordinating Council of bank associations of CIS countries, the International association of exchanges of CIS countries are running at the present time. The bank conferences of CIS, Baltic and Central Asian countries are held every year (Almaty, Bishkek). In such circumstances, there is a great need for institutional registration of those common interests and needs that exist in the financial organizations of CIS countries and their top-managers.
It is not a secret that namely on this level there is a great number of problems preventing the process of economic integration, about which the Heads of States permanently speak. The present process should already be sent down to lower level, where the experts work, and help the government structures to create full-fledged financial market, on which the interests of bank and financial organizations would go with the state integration projects harmoniously. It is useful at least to raise the question of intergovernmental taxation of banking operations in CIS countries or the problem of weighing the credit risks for calculation of regulative funds in CIS countries.
We need to mention that such “hidden dangers” exist in other economic spheres too, which directly or indirectly affect the activity of bank structures. For instance, there is an important issue of harmonization of the rules of registering the transit, where one of the important questions is the insurance of second-rate banks. Because of the fact that there is not an agreement among the CIS countries, this rule is valid only on the customs territory of separate countries, which creates a range of difficulties. Frequently, they generally use the deposit as ensuring of transit which leads to withdrawal of circulating assets although the most optimal measure is to admit the bank guarantees of one country in another one.
Therefore, as it can be understood, the Bankers of Eurasian club has several important distinctions and the membership in the Club gives considerable advantage to its all members in several directions. In contrast to the existing associations or regional international organizations, it has the opportunity of not only collective but also individual membership, which considerably increases the intellectual and staff potential of ECB.
In the network of Club its own analytical center would be created in order to reveal and analyze the current and potential dangers for the development of global, regional, and domestic financial markets, and it would also work out the recommendations and suggestions to neutralize or minimize them as well.
The monitoring of legislation and law enforcement practice would be done, and the preparation of recommendations of perfection of normative legal base of economic and social policy of CIS countries would be realized. The Club members will have the opportunity for getting the objective and scientifically based evaluation of possible consequences of those or other decisions or actions from the side of government structures or the global financial players as well as from the financial structures themselves. Besides, we shouldn’t forget about the regular access to potential partners from the line of bank or financial structures of CIS countries, and also the links of working contacts with executive agencies of CIS and EurasEU.
All this indicates that bank and financial structures of CIS countries will get extra instrument for lobbying their interests in those integration processes, which haven’t achieved dynamic circulation yet. If we consider that financial system is as blood vessels in the body of organism then the Bankers have got a difficult system of not only combining these vessels into one, but also making them work in a normal way.