MAY 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Tashkent ordered the closure of Noviy Vek, a privately owned weekly newspaper for, apparently, undermining the moral values of the country. Uzbekistan has one of the worst records for free press in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MAY 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A senior Uzbek official hinted that Uzbekistan wanted to increase its export of refined cotton fabrics. Media quoted Dilbar Mukhamedova, a senior official in UzbekYengil- Sanoat, the state company which produces light industrial goods, as saying that Uzbekistan currently produces $1b of refined cotton products.
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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MAY 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a new report, the World Bank said remittances from Tajik migrant workers to their relatives might drop by 40% this year.
Remittances in 2014 from Tajiks working in Russia made up over 42% of Tajikistan’s GDP keeping the country at the top of the world’s most remittance- dependent ranking.
The World Bank’s forecast, therefore, makes for grim reading.
According to the World Bank the Tajik economy will experience a much slower growth than in the past few years. The country’s GDP in 2015 will grow at 3.2%, less than half its 2014 figure of 6.7%.
The World Bank forecasts the growth to return above 5% only in 2017. It also said that inflation would rise steadily over the next two years to around 10%.
The data presented by the World Bank paints a dark picture for Tajikistan’s short term future.
The World Bank has given similar pessimistic forecasts for Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MAY 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Halyk Bank, Kazakhstan’s second largest bank majority owned by the daughter of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev and her husband Timur Kulibayev, posted year-on-year profits down 29%. Costs had risen, in particular workers’ salaries. Kazakhstan devalued its currency in 2014, triggering wage inflation.
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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MAY 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Direct Tbilisi-Tehran flights will begin next month, media reported quoting Tbilisi mayor David Narmania. The launch of a direct route between Tbilisi and Tehran highlights the growing links between the two countries. Tehran’s mayor Mohammad Bagher was visiting Tbilisi to sign a twinning agreement.
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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MAY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – With European gas supplies in mind, Turkmenistan intends to increase gas output, media quoted the petroleum minister, Muhammetnur Halyov, as saying. Turkmenistan is positioning itself to become a major supplier of gas to the EU in the next few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MAY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At its summit meeting in Riga, the EU promised Georgia that it would decide by the end of the year whether to grant Georgians visa-free travel.
Georgia’s government has lobbied hard for a visa-free regime across Europe as it sees this as a vital step towards achieving its ultimate aim of joining the EU.
The EU had presented the so-called Visa Liberalisation Action Plan (VLAP) progress report on Georgia and Ukraine a couple of weeks earlier. It congratulated Georgia on its progress, but also pointed out that it needed to implement reforms in asylum, anti-corrup- tion, human trafficking and drugs.
The decision was a disappointment to Georgia’s government as well as for many ordinary Georgians. Misha Shavtvaladze, a political scientist from Tbilisi State University, explained.
“But the fact that we are not ready for this upgrade had a negative psychological effect. It has a lot to do with the national pride, like winning the Eurovision does.”
The opposition blamed the government for the lack of good news, but Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili said he did receive a positive message from the EU. Georgia will be the next country to be granted visa waiver, possibly even earlier than Ukraine, he told media.
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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MAY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s parliament will consider adopting a law that will shift supervisory powers over commercial banks away from the Central Bank to an independent supervisory body, media reported.
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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MAY 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the country’s parliamentary election process is unfair.
In particular, the Court said discrepancies in the size of the constituencies used for the first-past-the-post system diminished the election’s fairness.
In Georgia’s parliamentary elections, 150 MPs are voted into parliament. The first- past-the-post system is used to elect 73 MPs and proportional representation for the remain- ing 77 seats. The problem,advocates for change have said, is that the first-past-the-post constituencies vary in size from 6,000 voters to over 150,000 voters.
The landmark ruling strengthens the case for change.
“It’s up to the Georgian Parliament to decide on proportional and majoritarian models of the electoral system provided that constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens will be protected in this process,” Georgian media quoted the Constitutional Court as saying.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MAY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s Central Bank denied it was restricting access to US dollars as a form of controlling its currency.
Two days earlier, the Tashkent-based Uzmetronom.com website quoted unnamed but, supposedly, reliable sources as saying that the Central Bank had halted the process for foreign and local companies to convert their local currency into US dollars for an unspecified period of time.
This is critical for companies which are keen to get their cash out of the country. Not being allowed to convert it severely undermines their operations.
Now, though media have quoted the Uzbek Central Bank as saying that this is not true.
Like the other countries in Central Asia, Uzbekistan trying to cope with a drop in oil prices and a fall Russia’s economy which has rippled across the region.
Last week, media reported that a senior official in the Uzbek Central Bank had written a letter to his superiors to warn that the country was running out of cash and that it could hardly afford to pay for vital services and salaries.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
