asia: ...Kazakhstan - Series 2013 to 2015, Signature Chairman Kairat Kelimbetov

Қазақстан Республикасы

(Republic of Kazakhstan)

Қазақстан Ұлттық Банкі

(National Bank of Kazakhstan)

Currency - Tenge (KZT)

Kazakhstan declared independence from the Soviet empire on 16.12.1991, just 10 days before the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26.12.1991. On 13.04.1993, the National Bank of Kazakhstan was formed and on 15.11.1993 issued its own currency, thus replacing the Russian ruble. The new currency is called 'Tenge', which means a set of scales. The word 'Tenge' originally came from the Mongolian word 'Tenge' which means 'balance or equal'. The currency 'Tenge' is divided into 100 tyin. Since then, the National Bank of Kazakhstan has been responsible for issuing the country's banknotes. When the tenge was introduced, the currency exchange rate was one tenge equal to 500 rubles. In today's exchange rate, one Russian ruble can buy more than 5 tenge approximately.

In this post, I have uploaded five notes. All these notes bear the signature of Kairat Kelimbetov. Kelimbetov was the Chairman of the National Bank of Kazakhstan from 01.10.2013 to 02.11.2015. During his tenure as the head of the central bank, I believe only four banknotes were released with his signature on it, and these were 1000, 2000, 5000 and 10000 tenge. The 10000 tenge is a Hybrid note. All these notes were released individually, and they were all dated between 2011 and 2014. It is very obvious that these notes were released as and when they are required. Whilst Kazakhstan is a huge country with more than 2.7 million km² in land area, almost 85% of the size of India but has a rather small population of just under 19 million people. More than half of the population are Kazakh, which is the native of Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan is almost a landlocked country sharing common borders with Russia in the north and west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to the south and China on the east. The only sea access is the Caspian sea which is situated to the west of the country.

Since 2015, Kairat Kelimbetov has been replaced by Daniyar Akishev (tenure 2015-2019). No banknotes bearing the signature of Danivar Akishev have been sighted so far as all banknotes issued since then do not have the signature of the Chairman of the central bank printed on it. The current Chairman of the bank is Erbolat Dossaev.

One Thousand Tenge