ASTANA (Reuters) - Kazakhstan's longtime leader predicted on Friday that the Central Asian oil exporter, which holds an election in March, would weather the crash in crude prices and he urged people to stop fretting over the tenge's slump against the dollar.
The former Soviet republic has allowed its currency to drop to 365 tenge per dollar as of Friday from 188 last August. But President Nursultan Nazarbayev, speaking at his Nur Otan party's congress ahead of the snap parliamentary election, said he had visited food markets and found that food prices were stable.
"Let us pause, take a deep breath, as they say in yoga, and forget about the dollar," he said. "I went to a bazaar before this (congress) and checked the prices for basic foodstuffs."
Nazarbayev said the prices for such staples as milk, butter and horse meat had actually fallen over the past 12 months. According to official data, consumer prices have risen 13.6 percent last year.
"Yes, lemons have become 150 tenge more expensive, but we can live without lemons, can't we?" said the 75-year old former Communist leader who has been in power since 1989.
But he indicated that economic reality also meant there would have to be spending cuts in the future, though he did not say how deep these would be and where.
Nazarbayev, re-elected for another five-year term last April, dissolved parliament this month and called a snap vote in a tactical move aimed at avoiding political campaigning during the peak of a potential economic crisis.
His party announced its list of 127 candidates for the 107 seats in the lower house, which includes Nazarbayev's eldest daughter Dariga, who is currently deputy prime minister.
The list also includes several pop singers and sports celebrities as well as an actor who had portrayed young Nazarbayev in a series of locally produced biographical movies.
Kazakhstan has never held an election judged free and fair by Western observers and there is little doubt that Nur Otan will retain its control over the lower house - where there has been no real opposition for years - in the March 20 vote.
Nazarbayev said his government would focus on protecting jobs while reducing unnecessary expenditure, which had ballooned thanks to windfall oil revenues in the past years.
"When there was plenty of money, everyone was spending it right and left and the government turned a blind eye to that," he said without specifying how big the cuts will be.
"Just remember that we have been living with $30-per-barrel oil for half a year now and nothing has happened," he said. "We will overcome (the impact of low oil prices) and maybe we should get used to this, I think it has come here to stay."
(Reporting by Raushan Nurshayeva; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
