OREANDA-NEWS. May 04, 2008. Kazkommertsbank JSC (Almaty), a listing company of Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE), provided KASE with the press release which reads as follows, reported the press-centre of KASE:

Kazkommertsbank made a comment to the conclusions of the Fitch rating agency in the special report on Kazakhstan banks recently published thereby.

The Fitch report mainly notes that despite of some issues with the reporting statements transparency, on the whole, Kazakhstan banking system is significantly strong.

The Fitch agency prepared the report on the basis of the analysis of credit provisions according to the Kazakhstan Accounting Standards (KSBU), noting that, these data often do not give an indication on the level of troubled loans.

Kazkommertsbank has been emphasizing that the classification of assets according to KSBU is not an unprejudiced indicator of the assets' quality. This is why the bank has always provided and will provide information on the quality of the credit portfolio according to the International Standards of Financial Reporting (ISFR). All the necessary information was published in the Kazkommertsbank 2007 results presentation.

The classification of assets, used by Fitch, is the main principle for charging of provisions. Kazkommertsbank has always been very conservative in charging of provisions that means the volume of provisions (reserves) against credit losses has always made a significant sum. At that, historically, the volume of actual losses (written off credits) in the bank made just a little stake of the provisions created.