Kazakhstan’s central bank plans to start hiring foreign asset managers next year to run the foreign-currency denominated part of the Central Asian nation’s $20 billion pension fund, a bank official said on Friday.
Nurzhan Tursunkhanov, head of the pension asset management division at the central bank, said that about 21 percent of the fund’s assets were held in foreign currencies, mostly dollars, and that may increase to 23 percent this year and rise further over the next few years.
The bank will keep managing some foreign investments, such as government bonds, on its own. It will hire external managers for tasks such as building and running an equities portfolio, Tursunkhanov said.
He declined to say how much in total the bank might allocate to foreign managers, but said that equities could make up 30 percent of total foreign-currency investments.
Tursunkhanov said the process could start in mid-2017 if the plan is approved by a council headed by President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
The oil-rich nation’s pension fund is replenished mostly by mandatory contributions from all employed workers, who transfer 10 percent of their pay there. (Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov, editing by Larry King)
