AKIPRESS.COM - Kazakhstan's central bank sold $144 million on Wednesday to support the tenge currency after it briefly sank through the "psychological" level of 300 per dollar on the interbank market.

The tenge weakened to 300.20 shortly after 0700 GMT, below the official rate of 283.98 set earlier on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE). By 1400 GMT, the tenge had bounced back to 283.30 per dollar on the interbank market, reports Reuters.

Dealers said the presence of the National Bank had been hardly visible during the morning KASE trading session when the official rate is set.

The exchange also holds a day and an evening session, both of which had closed by the time the bank made a statement saying it had decided to act because of "increased volatility of the tenge stemming from speculations of forex market players".

A separate statement issued by the central bank said Kazakhstan's second-largest lender, Halyk Bank, and its subsidiary Altyn Bank were the main market players on Wednesday, accounting together for a total of $105.1 million worth of currency transactions on the KASE.

The central bank and government allowed the tenge to float freely on Aug. 20 as it rapidly approached the lower end of an officially-set trading corridor of 170 to 198 per dollar. The tenge weakened sharply to below 250 per dollar after the move.

Halyk, which had lobbied for the de-facto devaluation of the tenge, is Kazakhstan's most profitable bank, majority-owned by President Nursultan Nazarbayev's daughter Dinara and her billionaire husband Timur Kulibayev.