Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of Kyrgyzstan commented on the suspension of servicing of Mir cards in Kyrgyzstan. Akylbek Japarov expressed his opinion in an interview with Kabar news agency.
«First of all, we have no fear of any sanctions. Life goes on even in their presence. Secondly, there are no objective grounds for imposing sanctions. Thirdly, it was not us who suspended servicing of Mir cards. We learned about it after the termination of service, as the Interbank Processing Center is not part of the government, but is managed by commercial banks,» he said.
Even the National Bank has no control over the Interbank Processing Center, which is more than 54 percent owned by commercial banks.
Akylbek Japarov
The Cabinet Chairman suggested that commercial banks may have feared possible sanctions. At the same time, he believes that Mir card would have benefited Kyrgyzstan more than the Russians. Suspension of servicing of that card will not affect Russia.
«We needed this system to work for us more than anything else. Since its work was stopped, we started looking for other ways. It would be good if the Interbank Processing Center coordinated this issue with the Cabinet of Ministers, because there are more than a million of our citizens in the Russian Federation. All of them used the Mir cards. We have been asking Russia for three years to open a bank or a branch of a large bank in the Kyrgyz Republic. They promise, but they have not opened it yet. I don’t know if they are working so slowly or they just don’t want to open a bank. It would be good if they opened at least one bank branch,» Akylbek Japarov concluded.
