DUSHANBE, December 1, Asia-Plus -- Kazkommertsbank, Kazakhstan’s largest correspondent bank, has opened its representative office in Tajikistan.  

An official opening of the Kazkommertsbank office will be held in Dushanbe today evening, according to the National Bank of Tajikistan (NBT). 

A source at Tajik central bank said that the NBT September 29 considered application of Kazkommertsbank for opening its representation in Tajikistan and approved it. 

The NBT source said that the bank’s representative office will not offer an assortment of products and services in Tajikistan as it was planned before, “because it is outside competence of the representative offices.”  “The Kazkommertsbank representative office in Dushanbe will study banking environment in Tajikistan and collect statistical data and send them to the bank’s headquarters in Kazakhstan,” said the source, “Besides, in the case of necessity it may arrange meetings of representatives of banking systems from the two countries.”     

Earlier, Rashid Saidov, the head of the Kazkommertsbank representative office in Dushanbe, said in his interview with Asia-Plus that the bank plans to offer an assortment of products and services in Tajikistan.  In particular, they planned to offer medium-sized and large Tajik companies trade and project financing, financing of investment projects, assets management, short-term crediting and other bank services. 

Established in 1990, Kazkommertsbank with headquarters in Almaty is the first private financial institute in Kazakhstan, and is fourth among CIS banks in terms of assets, loan portfolio and profit.  The banks assets amount to 1.95 trillions tenge (equivalent to US $8.9 billion). The loan portfolio accounts for some 60 percent of this amount (5.4 billion U.S. dollars).  In 2005, the bank’s profit was US$154.7 million.  As of July 1 2006, the bank had 22 branches and 69 offices in Kazakhstan.  The bank also has affiliates in Kyrgyzstan (Kazkommertsbank: Kyrgyzstan) and Russia (Moskomertsbank).