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Political row envelops Georgia’s city statue to lovers

TBILISI/Georgia, SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A row has erupted in the Georgian Black Sea town of Batumi over damage to a statue of the South Caucasus’ most famous lovers — Ali and Nino. The opposition UNM party, the political machine of former president Mikheil Saakashvili, has accused the ruling Georgian Dream coalition of deliberating damaging the statue it erected in 2010.

Batumi has become a political battleground since 2012, when the Georgian Dream won a parliamentary election. Mr Saakashvili had treated Batumi as a pet project, lavishing cash, ornate buildings and grand designs on the city.

Now, though, the UNM accuses the Georgian Dream of pulling down many of these projects to undermine Saakashvili’s legacy in the city.

In a Facebook post, Mr Saakashvili, who is now the governor of Odessa in Ukraine, said that under the guise of moving the statue, the Georgian Dream had irreparably damaged it.

“Today, with the support of Russian oligarch Ivanishvili, the moving statue Ali and Nino was destroyed.” he said. The Georgian Dream has dismissed the allegations. The statues of Ali and Nino had been sited at the entrance to Batumi’s harbour, a prominent position in the city.

Ali and Nino was first published in 1937. It detailed a love affair between the Muslim Azeri Ali and Christian Georgian Nino, and is supposed to symbolise eternal love and understanding between nations.

The statue was designed by Georgian artist Tamara Kvesitadze.

Lincoln Mitchell, a Tbilisi-based political scientist, explained just why Batumi attracted so much attention from the Georgian Dream.

“The UNM government spearheaded a dramatic modernisation of Batumi, a city that 15 years ago was a sleepy coastal town led by a nasty warlord.” he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Turkmenistan opens new power plant

SEPT. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan inaugurated a power plant in the Darvaza district, 250km north of Ashgabat, an indicator of how the country is setting itself up as a power exporter.

Turkish company Calyk Energy built the plant and US-based General Electric provided the four gas turbines for the 500MW power plant.

The official Turkmen media reported on Mr Berdymukhamedov’s visit to the opening of the plant.

It said: “The President stressed that Turkmenistan is constantly investing in electricity power generation, which will allow it to increase the exports to meet the demand of world markets.”

Turkmenistan is developing its electricity generation capacity. Power plants are being built in Turkmen- bashi, on the Caspian Sea coast, in the Lebap province, on the border with Uzbekistan, and in Mary, in the south-east of the country.

Turkmenistan is already exporting electricity to Afghanistan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Kyrgyzstan should diversify assets

SEPT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz should diversify their assets, including cash, to protect themselves from the sharp swings in the value of currencies and commodities, Raushan Seitkazimova, head of the Central Bank’s monetary control unit, told media. The value of the Kyrgyz som has been fluctuating wildly, over the past few months.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Inflation rises in Georgia

SEPT. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Producer prices have risen by nearly 10% in the past year in Georgia, the country’s statistics office said. The main driver of the inflation was a sharp increase in prices of electricity, water and gas, rises all linked to the fall in the value of the Georgian lari.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

EBRD to loan for buses in Kazakhstan

SEPT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is considering a $65m loan to Astana LRT to buy 200 modern buses, media reported. Astana, the Kazakh capital, has been growing , putting major pressure on its public transport systems.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Georgia’s court rules on pretrial detention

SEPT. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Constitutional Court ruled that it was illegal to keep a person in pre-trial detention for more than 9 months. The ruling is a major victory for the former mayor of Tbilisi Giorgi Ugulava who is accused of corruption. He is a member of the UNM and has said the accusations are politically motivated. Mr Ugulava has been in pre-trial detention for 14 months, after one of the charges was altered.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Coal production drops in Kazakhstan

SEPT. 14 2015, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — Coal production in Kazakhstan dropped by 6.7% in the first eight months of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014, data released by the Eurasian Economic Commission showed.

The Eurasian Economic Commission is the administrative arm of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. The Eurasian Economic Union is a trade bloc set up by the Kremlin that includes Kazakhstan, Armenia, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan.

The data showed a fairly pronounced slump in coal production in Kazakhstan, while the other countries maintained output.

The slump in Kazakhstan’s production may be yet another indicator of the impact of the economic recession. Kazakhstan relies heavily on coal to fire many of its larger industrial centres.

If order books are down, demand for coal and production would also slump.

Georgian winegrowers protest against falling prices

SEPT. 11 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Several hundred farmers protested in the ancient winemaking region of Kakheti in eastern Georgia, demanding that the government increase subsidies for harvested grapes.

Eyewitnesses said that the demonstrations were passionate and angry but peaceful, although some protesters brawled with police after tension boiled over. There were no reports of any injuries and only three people were detained but the unrest does show how the former Soviet Union’s economic malaise is deepening.

A grape farmer attending the protests told broadcaster Rustavi2 that they will not back down, but that people are afraid.

“I demand a rise of prices. People are afraid of this government, they do everything to keep us quiet. What should we do?” grape farmer Murtaz Gorkhelashvili said.

The price for a bunch of grapes has fallen by 40-55% this year because of a fall in wine export to Russia and Ukraine.

Western-imposed sanctions on Russia and a sharp fall in oil prices have tipped its economy into recession. A civil war has heavily dented Ukraine’s economy.

In 2014 wine production accounted for 2.5% of Georgia’s GDP, a higher proportion than France, even, where wine makes up around 0.9% of GDP.

Independent consultant and freelance wine writer Caroline Gilby described how important wine is to Georgia’s economy and also to its national identity.

“Wine is economically critical to this small country with its limited natural resources,” she said.

The government subsidy, an election promise by the Georgian Dream coalition in 2012, of an extra 0.35 lari per kilo of white grapes and 0.15 lari per red grapes for farmers is considered insufficient by the protestors.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Brazil MPs visit Azerbaijan

SEPT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A group of parliamentarians from Brazil visited Azerbaijan, promising to boost ties. The meeting is important for Azerbaijan as it works to widen its diplomatic reach, especially in the so-called BRIC countries which economists have said will power global growth.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

CPC pipeline upgrades pumping stations in Kazakhstan

ALMATY, SEPT. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), has finished upgrade work to two pumping stations that will boost the capacity of its oil pipeline running from west Kazakhstan to Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.

Plans to increase the capacity of the Tengiz field near Atyrau have been delayed because of low oil prices, but the gradual expansion of the CPC’s capacity is still important.

Specifically, the latest upgrade work was focused on the pipeline’s two pumping stations in Kazakhstan. The upgrade will boost the flow of oil through the pipeline to 38m tonnes of oil from 35m.

This is a stepping stone towards hitting higher capacity. Nikolai Savin, a deputy vice-president at Russian pipeline company Transneft, explained the consortium’s ambitions.

“The expansion will allow us to increase the volume of transported oil to 67-70m tonnes a year,” local media quoted him as saying. “In the future, the Kazakh fields at Tengiz, Karachaganak and Kashagan will ship around 55m tonnes through CPC.”

CPC, which was established in 2001, is an international pipeline jointly operated by the Russian and Kazakh governments together with national and multinational oil companies led by US’ Chevron. Chevron is also the lead Western partner developing the Tengiz field in the Tengizchevroil consortium (TCO).

The Tengiz field is Kazakhstan’s main oil producer, pumping roughly 27m tonnes of oil each year. This is a third of Kazakhstan’s total oil production. Almost all of the oil produced by Tengiz is exported via CPC.

For years, TCO has been planning to expand production. The project was suspended, though, earlier this year because of the sustained low oil prices, frustrating both investors and the Kazakh government.

According to Sauat Mynbayev, Chairman of Kazmunaigas, Kazakhstan’s state-owned company which holds shares in both CPC and TCO, a final investment decision for Tengiz will be made in Jan. 2016 (Sept. 17). In any case, he said costs had been cut.

“When it was planned, the TCO expansion was quoted at $38b,” Mr Mynbayev told the Interfax news agency. “In the current circumstances, we decided to re-negotiate with all contractors to bring the cost down to around $34b.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)