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Kazakhstan expects $180m from Kashagan

APRIL 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk Kazyna and its state-run energy company Kazmunaigas will receive $180m from the Kashagan oil project in 2017, media reported, quoting Dauren Karabayev, a vice president at Kazmunaigas. The Kazakh economy has been flatlining since mid-2014 when oil prices collapsed. Kashagan, in the Caspian Sea, finally came onstream at the end of last year after a delay of three years.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

KAZ Minerals CFO to take over as CEO

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APRIL 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — KAZ Minerals, the Kazakhstan- focused copper produced listed on the London Stock Exchange, said that its current CFO Andrew Southam would be promoted to CEO from Jan. 2018. He replaces Oleg Novachuk who has been CEO for 11 years and is set to become the KAZ Minerals chairman.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Emergencies ministry is underpowered, says Kyrgyz minister

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MAY 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s emergencies ministry is short-staffed and under-funded, deputy Kalys Ahmatov told parliament. The emergencies ministry is a legacy of the Soviet era and is deployed to deal with the aftermath of everything from earthquakes and avalanches to plane crashes. Specifically, Mr Ahmatov said that the ministry needed another 240 employees and 30% more equipment.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

EBRD says may still lend to Azerbaijan despite EITI row

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MAY 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) may still lend Azerbaijan $500m for a gas pipeline linking the Caspian Sea to Europe despite Baku quitting the EITI, a global transparency watchdog.

The comments by EBRD chairman Suma Chakrabarti go against an EBRD statement last year which said Azerbaijan would have to pass the EITI’s transparency criteria to receiving funding. The EITI suspended Azerbaijan’s membership in March for failing to improve NGO laws, triggering Azerbaijani officials to walk out of the organisation.

Now, in an interview with Bloomberg, Mr Chakrabarti appeared to suggest that mission creep may be blurring the Oslo-based EITI’s remit.

“What’s happened on the EITI is very, very unfortunate,” Bloomberg quoted Mr Chakrabarti as saying. He then said that people were “worried about some of the criteria that are now being used in EITI”.

Azerbaijani officials complained that the EITI, an acronym for Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, had drifted from its remit of improving accountability in mining and oil and gas sectors and was now acting as a watchdog on more general democracy issues.

In his Bloomberg interview, Mr Chakrabarti said that the EBRD is “progressing” its finance plans for the Southern Gas Corridor and will give a final decision by the end of 2017.

“The question really is whether the Azeris are adopting the principles, not just by saying they are but by showing transparency in what they do,” he said.

“That’s a judgment we’ll make.”

The $40b Southern Gas Corridor is a network of pipelines that should pump Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, reducing its reliance on Russia. It has political backing from the EU and business backing from BP and other multinational but corruption and human rights activists are critical of Azerbaijan and have said that Western companies and governments should not be dealing with it.

At the EITI, the head of its secretariat, Jonas Moberg, told The Conway Bulletin that Mr Chakrabarti’s interview hadn’t undermined its core mission of increasing accountability within the extractive sectors.

“Civil society needs to be able to hold their governments to account if the EITI is going to have a meaningful impact on how the oil sector is governed in a country,” he said.

Kazakhstan, Armenian, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are also members of the EITI. The EITI criticised Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan this year for making inadequate progress against its criteria.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Domestic violence law in Kyrgyzstan becomes strengthened

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APRIL 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev signed into law a bill that is designed to strengthen legislation against domestic violence. The new law obliges police to investigate all reports of domestic violence even if the complaint was not filed by the victim.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Air China to fly to Kazakh capital

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APRIL 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Air China said that it will start operating a direct flight between Beijing and Astana from June 1, highlighting the growth in the number of airlines flying directly to Kazakhstan. The route will help strengthen links between China and Kazakhstan. Air Astana already flies an Astana – Beijing service. Astana Airport is opening new passenger terminal too next month which will be able to process more passengers.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Uzbek president orders to rename airport after Karimov

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MAY 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek president issued a decree renaming Tashkent International Airport after former president Islam Karimov. Karimov died in September 2016 having ruled Uzbekistan since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. He has been genuinely mourned in Uzbekistan but to outsiders he is remembered more for having a poor human rights record and his cantankerous, isolationist foreign policy.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Tajik police arrests anti-corruption officials

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APRIL 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Tajikistan have arrested 17 officials at the state anti-corruption unit for abuse of power and document forgery, local media reported. The unit used to be headed by Rustam Emomali, son of Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon. He became the mayor of Dushanbe earlier this year. One of the officials arrested was deputy director Davlatbek Khairzoda.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Economic growth picks up in Georgia

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APRIL 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Year-on-year economic growth in Georgia accelerated to 5% in the first quarter of 2017 because of an increase in exports and remittances, the statistics service said. The rise beats the Georgian government’s expectations of a 4% rise for the whole of 2017.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Currencies: Azerbaijani manat

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MAY 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Despite a fall in oil price to $48.48 on May 4 and $49.10 on May 5 (that’s the price of a barrel of Brent) the Azerbaijani manat managed to regain some of the ground it has lost in the past few weeks.

Oil and gas are the driver of the Azerbaijani economy but although prices have fallen from around the $55 mark that OPEC has been targeting the manat was trading at 1.6972/$1, near recent highs.

As the graph shows, since the beginning of April the manat has gain 2.2% against the US dollar while oil prices have fallen by 5.6%. The main reason for the slump in oil prices is a concern about growing US stockpiles of oil.

On the equities side of the markets, KAZ Minerals, formerly called Kazakhmys has had a bumpy ride. It shares surged after strong Q1 results showed that output had grown. It hit a 5-week high of 503.5p on May 1 only to fall heavily in the following few days. A sharp drop in the price of copper, its main export, forced down its share price to 445.6p by May 5.

This was a heavier fall than the fall in the price of copper which dropped 5% to $252.85/lb. The fall in copper prices was linked to concern over China’s slowing industry and the failure of US President Donald Trump to deliver on promises to support copper prices.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)