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Uzbekistan starts building oil refinery

APRIL 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan started construction of a $2.2b oil refinery near the border with Kazakhstan, a project that will boost jobs and should also plug a yawning fuel supply gap.

The Jizzakh refinery will be Uzbekistan’s fourth and will produce more than 3.7m tonnes of gasoline, more than 700,000 tonnes of jet fuel and about 300,000 tonnes of other oil products annually, according to officials.

It will receive unrefined oil through a yet-to-be-built pipeline from Kazakhstan, helping to cement improving bilateral relations.

The refinery is the most high- profile project initiated under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Uzbek leader since September last year. He has made boosting jobs and improving bilateral relations with Uzbekistan’s neighbours his core policy initiatives.

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

Turkmen president sacks Prosecutor for bribe-taking

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MAY 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov fired General Prosecutor Amanmyrat Halliyev and 10 junior prosecutors for bride-taking.

Last month, Mr Berdymukhamedov sacked his energy minister in one of his semi-regular government reshuffles which his opponents say shows his insecurities.

It is unclear what bribes Mr Halliyev, 43, is accused of taking.

He had been General Prosecutor since 2013 and before that had been head of the Supreme Court. The day before Mr Halliyev was sacked, the 51-year old deputy PM for industry, Batyr Ereshov, died from unknown causes. He was one of the more prominent members of Mr Bedymukhamedov’s cabinet.

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

Kazakh president’s daughter backs health boost

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APRIL 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Dariga Nazarbayeva, the eldest daughter of President Nursultan Nazarbayev and tipped by some analysts as his successor, has proposed boosting state investment into sport by 30%, media reported. Ms Nazarbayeva is now a senator. She had previously been a deputy PM.

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

Azerbaijan forces OSCE to close office in Yerevan

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YEREVAN, MAY 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The OSCE will close its office in Yerevan, its last in the South Caucasus, after Azerbaijan refused to agree to an extended remit.

The closure of the OSCE’s office is a reflection of worsening relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia and increased tension around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Each week both sides accuse the other of breaking a ceasefire. Last year, the worst fighting since 1994 killed dozens of people.

The OSCE, Europe’s democracy and conflict watchdog, said it had no choice but to close the office.

“We regret that after months of negotiations compromise on the extension of the mandate proved impossible. The Chairmanship has exhausted all possibilities to resolve the impasse,” it said.

“The Office is expected to close in the coming months.”

For the OSCE to maintain its office in Yerevan it needed the consensus of all 57 its members. Azerbaijan refused to endorse it because of its de-mining operation in Nagorno- Karabakh which it claimed legitimised Armenia-backed rebels’ rule over the disputed region. The US has accused Azerbaijan of deliberating using the issue of de-mining to close the OSCE office.

Azerbaijan closed down the OSCE’s Baku office in 2015 and in 2008, after a Georgia-Russia war, Russia forced the OSCE to close its office in Tbilisi.

Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Centre based in Yerevan, said the closure of the OSCE office made the West look weak.

“This decision only reaffirms the weakness and lack of Western resolve in the face of a direct challenge from an authoritarian country,” he told The Conway Bulletin.

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

UzGazOil workers complain about salaries

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MAY 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Employees at Uzbekistan’s state- owned UzGasOil network of petrol stations have not been paid their salaries, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website reported. It said that in a rare show of worker defiance in Uzbekistan, the UzGasOil employees had complained directly to the management about their unpaid salaries. RFE/RL quoted one worker saying that he was owed about $125 for two months work. RFE/RL contacted UzGasOil, rebranded from Uzbekneftegaz this year, who denied that there was a problem. In Uzbekistan, protests by workers against company management are virtually unheard of.

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

Saudi to give $200m for new parliament building in Tajikistan

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MAY 2 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Saudi Arabia will spend $200m building a new parliament building in Dushanbe, the Asia-Plus news agency reported quoting a government official. News leaked last year that Saudi Arabia was prepared to fund the construction of a new parliament, although it had been unclear how much it would cost.

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

Georgia’s Central Bank raises rates

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MAY 2 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s Central Bank raised interest rates to 7% from 6.75%, its highest rate since June 2016, because of supply-side price pressure. One of the Central Bank’s key remits is to keep inflation at 4% and it said that one- off price rises, such as an increase in excise duties, were pushing up prices. It also said, though, that it didn’t expect any more interest rate rises this year. Annualised inflation in March was 5.4%.

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

Uzbek president reveals hydropower plan

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MAY 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a decree, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said that he wanted to develop hydropower stations across the country to plug a power gap. The plan is to build 42 small hydropower stations over the next five years with another 32 being built afterwards. Uzbekistan’s power generation systems has long-needed an overhaul, with its over-reliance on Soviet kit.

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

Pipeline from Turkmenistan to India to complete by 2020

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MAY 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Pakistan’s ministry of natural resources said that it expected the TAPI gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan to northern India to be completed on schedule in 2020. The pipeline is considered vital for Turkmenistan’s economy and also for consumers in Pakistan and India who are hungry for more power.

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

Kyrgyz president admin. files another law suit against media group

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APRIL 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Independent Kyrgyz news website Zanoza.kg said that the Kyrgyz Presidential Administration had filed a fifth lawsuit against it for allegedly offending the dignity of Pres. Almazbek Atambayev. Media campaigners have said that press freedom is being squeezed in Kyrgyzstan, once held up as a bastion of free press in Central Asia.

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