Weekly Forex Review (03/27/2023-03/31/2023)

The tenge strengthened by 2.3% last week and the exchange rate amounted to 451.7 tenge per dollar. At the same time, the average weighted rate was 449.99 tenge per dollar in March. Strong support for the national currency is provided by the projection of oil quote growth, which we think contains a significant share of market sentiment.

So, oil strengthened to 79.8 dollars per barrel during the week. At the beginning of the week, news was released about the suspension of the export of Kurdish oil through the Turkish port of Ceyhan due to disagreements between Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. An additional factor was the statistical data on US commercial oil reserves: they decreased by 7.5 million barrels. And at the end of the week, the news was released about the reduction of oil production by the OPEC+ member countries from May until the end of the year. The total reduction will be 1.66 million barrels per day.

At the same time, regarding the development of the global economy, market participants remain rather pessimistic, which is not completely supported by economic statistics in our opinion. Thus, the Dollar Index fell by 0.53 points during the week. Investors’ concerns about the crisis in the banking sector do not subside. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that she was not considering universal insurance of Americans’ bank deposits, while the opposite was stated before. Such a statement is likely to increase the outflow of deposits from small and medium-sized US banks.