1998 Russian financial crisis
The Russian crisis was a hard blow to the Kazakh economy. Kazakhstan lost its pricing competitiveness and its exports were in shambles. On the other hand, cheap Russian goods were coming into here. This killed domestic industries. There was huge pressure on the tenge, the Kazakh currency, and Kazakhstan's balance of payments worsened. However, the NBK continued to keep the value of the tenge. In fact, they had spent close to a billion dollars to keep the level of tenge. Their foreign exchange reserves halved.