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It is hard to find any successful reform in Kazakh finance that doesn’t have Grigory Marchenko’s mark on it.
His first chance to change the structure of Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet economy came in 1995 when, as deputy central bank governor, he was tasked with leading reform of the country’s new chaotic banking sector.
Initially, a proposed new banking law – based on Basel I methodology – met with stiff resistance from Kazakh bankers. “The heads of the large and mid-sized banks came to us and said: ‘Why don’t you just close all the banks and reintroduce the old system with state-owned banks because there is no way we can operate under this level of regulation’,” says Marchenko.
He and his colleagues met with the bankers twice a week for the next six months and patiently explained the proposed reforms. “Eventually they understood it wasn’t just a bunch of young guys sitting in the central bank and telling them what do it – it was how the world operates,” he says.
