JAN. 4 2015, (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan may have serious problems making its national budget work with oil prices dropping below $50/barrel, media reported (Jan. 4). The government’s budget estimates are calculated at oil costing $90/barrel. Oil revenues directly contribute over half the government’s revenue.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
DEC. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) said it had dispatched its mission to observe parliamentary elections in Uzbekistan later this month. The OSCE, Europe’s election and democracy watchdog, has already said it is going to send a limited mission because it expects the vote to be fixed.
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
DEC. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Bank of Georgia, which is listed on the London stock exchange and is the largest bank in the country, said it wanted to buy the Georgian subsidiary of Ukraine’s PrivatBank. PrivatBank is Ukraine’s largest bank. Bank of Georgia said that it had agreed a preliminary deal to buy the bank for $51m.
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
DEC. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Bread prices have begun to rise for the first time since March, Armenian media reported. Armenia’s economy has been hit by the downturn in Russia’s economy. Commentators said that the rise in bread prices was directly attributable to an increase in the price of flour.
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
DEC. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – China has given Azerbaijan a grant of around $4.5m to boost economic relations between the two countries, media reported. China has expanded its economic and diplomatic reach across the South Caucasus significantly over the past few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
DEC. 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The IMF cut Kazakhstan’s growth rate for 2014 to 4.3% from 4.6% because of a slump in oil prices and the downturn in Russia’s sanction-hit economy. It also said Kazakhstan needed to cut more of its non-performing loans (NPLs) from its banking sector. Kazakhstan has one of the highest proportions of NPLs in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
DEC. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The consortium developing the Karachaganak oil and gas site (KPO) in west Kazakhstan denied that a gas leak at its plant poisoned 20 children and three teachers at a school in a nearby village.
Ambulances rushed the children and teachers to hospital after they suddenly fainted on Nov. 28.
KPO made the statement after Kazakh media widely quoted the Prosecutor-General for Kazakhstan’s western region, Serik Karamanov, saying that there had been a brief gas leak the day before the mass fainting at the Karachaganak site only a few kilometres away from the village.
The KPO statement said: “A mobile environmental monitoring station has also been despatched to Berezovka village and has reported no exceedances above the official Maximum Permissible Concentration limits.”
Whether the Kazakh authorities agree, remains to be seen.
Mr Karamanov was clear about what he thought may have been the cause of the poisoning.
“It has been established that at 14:19 on November 27 at the gas-processing complex of KPO, there occurred a discharge of condensate for a period of two minutes,” he said according to local media reports.
The incident is a reminder of the tension at local levels between the foreign-led projects in the energy sector and local communities who accuse them of not doing enough to protect their environment.
Karachaganak is important to Kazakhstan. It is considered one of the country’s most successful projects, and produces around 40% of Kazakhstan’s gas and 13% of its oil. Britain’s BG Group and Italy’s ENI own a 29.5% stake each, Chevron owns 18%, Russia’s Lukoil owns 13.5% and the Kazakh state oil and gas company, KazMunaiGas owns 10%.
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
DEC. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Georgian lari and the Armenian dram have fallen sharply against the US dollar. The lari hit its lowest level for 10 years and the dram its lowest level since 2006. The root cause of the collapse of the currencies is the weakening of Russia’s economy because of a collapse in oil prices and Western- imposed sanctions.
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
DEC. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Baku arrested Khadija Ismayilova, one of Azerbaijan’s most prominent investigative journalists, and sent her to two months pre-trial detention.
Ms Ismayilova is accused of goading another journalist into committing suicide. She and her supporters have denied the charges.
Ms Ismayilova has a high profile in Azerbaijan for several reasons. She hosts a radio show for the local language station of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, she is a vocal critic of the government and has published various articles alleging corruption against the authorities and she was also at the centre of what she described as a sex sting nearly three years ago.
In the sex sting, videos of her having sex where posted online. They had been taken from inside her house. She again accused the authorities of trying to frame her.
Europe and the United States have voiced their concerns, increasingly loudly, about a freedom of speech clampdown in Azerbaijan. The charges against Ms Ismayilova are another indication of this, they said.
And on the streets of Baku, the atmosphere was tense. People were, generally, afraid to discuss the case.
If they did discuss it, they were clear that they thought Ms Ismayilova’s criticism of the authorities had been the trigger for her detention.
Rauf, 24, the owner of a small business, told a Conway Bulletin correspondent: “Certainly it’s because of her steady critical position against government officials.”
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
DEC. 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Prosecutors in Tajikistan said they had arrested 46 men who were planning to travel to Syria to fight for the radical group Islamic State, media reported. Officials in Tajikistan have previously said that 300 Tajiks are fighting with Islamic State.
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
