The $300 limit has a side door, and state contractors hold the key

Since May, Talasbank customers have been allowed to withdraw no more than US$300 a month in cash dollars, or to convert no more than that from som. Pensioners queue at the counters on the first of the month. At the Bazar-i Kalan this week, unlicensed changers were buying dollars at 11.40 som and selling at 11.85. The official rate has been 8.40 since 2008.

Not everyone is limited. An internal Talasbank circular dated 3 June 2026, a copy of which was given to the Times, exempts what it calls “priority payroll and import accounts” from the cap. An annex lists 41 companies. The Times has checked each name against the State Register of Legal Entities and the published awards of the state procurement office.

Twenty-six of the 41 hold current state contracts, mostly for construction, fuel, security services and feed. Seven are importers of food or medicine. Four are the bank’s own subsidiaries. The remaining four could not be identified. Among the contractors are two companies that have built schools under the Governor’s programme and one that supplies fuel to the Gendarmerie.

What the bank says

Talasbank confirmed the circular. Its press office said the exemptions covered “employers with contractual obligations to pay wages in dollars” and importers of “essential goods”, and that they were “a normal feature of cash management in a period of reduced banknote deliveries”. It said the list was reviewed monthly and that any company could apply.

Asked how a company applies, the bank said: “Through its relationship manager.” It did not say how many applications had been refused.

The Bank of Irad, which supervises Talasbank, said it had been informed of the bank’s cash measures and that “allocation of scarce banknotes among customers is a commercial matter”. Its view, repeated since spring, is that reserves fully cover the som and that the street rate is “speculation in a small cash market”.

Who pays

The cap was introduced after correspondent banks in Almaty cut shipments of banknotes. The bank has never said how many dollars it receives each month, or how they are shared out. A retired schoolteacher in the queue at the Kalinin Street branch on 1 October, who asked not to be named, said she had waited four hours to draw her son’s remittance from Novosibirsk. “If the dollars are short, they are short for everyone,” she said. “That is what I was told.”

Under the circular, they are not short for everyone.