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EBRD heads to Uzbek capital

FEB. 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) sent its first mission to Tashkent to meet with officials from the new government of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev for the first time since Islam Karimov died in September, Reuters reported. Reuters suggested that this visit was important as it might signal renewed interest in investing in Uzbekistan by the EBRD.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Mobile subscriptions fall in Tajikistan

FEB. 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Mobile phone subscriptions in Tajikistan fell 22% in 2016 to 8.7m, the telecompaper.com website reported by quoting industry data. The drop is likely linked to the sharp economic downturn that has hit Tajikistan and its neighbours over the past couple of years. It relies heavily on Russia to power its economy but the Russian economy has tipped into a recession because of a fall in oil prices.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Food prices jump in Armenia

FEB. 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Price inflation in Armenia is increasingly diverging between food and non-food items, the presidential adviser to the National Statistics Agency, Gurgen Martirosyan, said. In January, he said, food prices were 7.4% higher than in December 2016. Non-food prices, though, fell 3.4% and services by fell 1.8%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Tajik journalists quit worsening media scene

FEB. 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Well-established journalists in Tajikistan are leaving the country as the media environment worsens, the London-based media NGO Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) said. After a series of interviews, it said that it knew of at least 20 journalists who had quit journalism in Tajikistan in the past year, including six with IWPR training. IWPR blamed a combination of state pressure and economic insecurity for the drop out.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

$9.5m sock-making factory opens in northern Kyrgyzstan

BISHKEK, FEB. 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz sock-maker Textile Trans opened a new $9.5m factory in the Chui region of northern Kyrgyzstan, a rare example of manufacturing investment in one of the the former Soviet Union’s poorest countries.

Textile Trans said the factory would employ 150 people and that it would producewoollen socks and tights mainly for the local market.

PM Sooronbay Jeenbekov opened the factory. He said that it was going to give a boost to the whole country.

“This is a significant event not only for the Chuiregion, but for the whole country. With the opening of this enterprise we will decrease the dependence of Kyrgyzstan on imports of textile products in the form of fabric, which will reduce production costs for local garment manufacturers,” local media quoted him as saying.

A loan of $7.5m from the Russian- Kyrgyz Development Fund helped Textile Trans pay for the new factory. The Russian-Kyrgyz Development Fund was an organisation set up in 2015 by the Kremlin as a sweetener for Kyrgyzstan to join the Eurasian Economic Union.

And this sort of investment is important in Kyrgyzstan. Around 50% of its GDP is linked to fragile remittance flows from workers living abroad, mainly in Russia, and another 10% or so of the country’s wealth is derived from the Kumtor gold mine in the east of the country. This is owned by Centerra Gold, although the Kyrgyz government owns a 27% stake in the Toronto-listed company.

Analysts have been calling for Kyrgyzstan to diversify its economic base away from gold mining and labour exports, and news that Textile Trans has opened a new factory will be welcomed.

Tourism is another major potential revenue flow that Kyrgyzstan wants to tap into.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Fashion label opens factory in Georgia

FEB. 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian fashion design company Materia has opened a new factory on the outskirts of Tbilisi that will hire 250 people to produce clothes for export to Switzerland, Australia, South Korea, Russia, Italy, China, Armenia, Kuwait, and Ukraine. The factory was funded by a 1.2m euro loan given the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Stock market: Nostrum Oil and Gas

FEB. 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Nostrum Oil & Gas, the London- listed and Kazakhstan-focused, oil producer hit its lowest level since the beginning of the year on Feb. 9. On its main listing in London, Nostrum’s shares were valued at 436p.

Analysts have said that the drop, which has seen it tumble from a high of 475/$1 since Feb. 1, was linked to a general softening of oil prices rather than any news linked to the company itself.

Instead most analysts have given the company a ‘buy’ rating and raised their target prices. Last month Deutsche Bank, Numis Securities, GMP Securities and

Panmure Gordon all gave Nostrum a ‘buy’ rating and targeted share prices of 535p to 600p.

Credit Suisse downgraded its outlook for Nostrum to a ‘hold’ from a ‘buy’ and targeted a price of 415p to 440p.

At the end of last month, Nostrum said in its annual report that output had just about matched expectations and that it would realise savings in 2017 through a connection to the KTO pipeline.

“(This) will allow us to realise significant savings to exported crude oil transportation costs and continue to seek to reduce costs across the business,” it said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Kazakh banking sector in bad shape, say IMF

FEB. 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s banking sector needs urgent care and attention if the country is going to be able to pull through an economic downturn that has destroyed growth and wiped out people’s ability to pay back loans. The IMF said that a large proportion of the banks’ loans and assets were linked to the construction sector which has been particularly hard hit. Kazakhstan’s Central Bank has said that it would be willing to use state funds to support banks.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Turkmen official GDP growth seems steady

FEB. 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen TV said that economic growth in Turkmenistan had fallen to 6.2% in 2016, down from 6.5% in 2015. Growth of 6.2% would still mark a major achievement for Turkmenistan which is reliant on gas sales for its revenues. Political observers have often challenged the veracity of the official data coming out of Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan holds a presidential election this month that incumbent president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is set to win.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Amnesty criticises Kazakhstan over social media crackdown

FEB. 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Kazakhstan are chipping away at personal liberties with their increasingly aggressive crackdown on social media sites, Amnesty International said in a statement. It said independent media has been destroyed and that until recently Facebook and other social media sites had played an important role in facilitating political discourse. Now, though Amnesty said, the authorities were tracking people’s comments and using them in court to incriminate them.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)