OCT. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – KEGOC, Kazakhstan’s state-owned electricity grid operator, said it would pay a dividend of 24.93 tenge/share (7.5 cent) to its shareholders. The dividend, which measured 40% of the company’s first half net profit, was, proportionally, significantly lower than its dividend last year, when it redistributed all net profit among its shareholders.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)
OCT. 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Over the course of just a few months, KAZ Minerals has nearly doubled its stock price in London, reaching 267.1p by Thursday.
The company, which operates in Kazakhstan’s copper mining sector, continues to rally off the back of good production results throughout the year and timidly growing copper prices, now at 2.11/lb.
Copper prices, which have fallen sharply from the $3/lb of November 2014, had hovered at around 2.15/lb in September, before dropping back. But now the feeling is that prices are moving back up.
China, a major copper consumer, posted steady growth prospect and negative news from the US housing market indirectly bodes well for copper prices. Sluggish US economic news weakens the dollar and pushes up prices. KAZ Minerals improved its position in both production and revenues this year, mostly due to the start of the Aktogay project, which cost $2.2b to put in operation.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)
OCT. 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian police said that they had arrested one man and put out an arrest warrant for another linked to a bomb attack on the car of United National Movement (UNM) MP Givi Targamadze shortly before a parliamentary election this month. Police did not release details of the arrested man. The car bomb, in the centre of Tbilisi, injured four pedestrians.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)
OCT. 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Eurasianet website reported that prices of basic foodstuffs are spiraling in Turkmenistan as the economy buckles under inflationary pressure linked to a sharp economic downturn. It also said that the government has had to cancel a series of construction projects to save money. It didn’t give any details of the particular contracts which had been cancelled. The Turkmen government has not commented.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)
OCT. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a meeting in Tashkent, the foreign ministers of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan signed a deal to extend bilateral relations. Although vague in detail, the agreement is important because it underlines the improving ties between the two neighbours. For most of the year tension along the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border has been rising. Since the death of Uzbek president Islam Karimov in September, though, dialogue between the two sides has improved markedly.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)
OCT. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s Central Election Commission set Oct. 30 as the date for run- offs in at least 48 single mandate seats which failed to return a majority winner in a parliamentary election on Oct. 8. The vote is important because, although the Georgian Dream is all-but certain to win a majority in the 150-seat parliament, if it wins a total of 113 seats it will be able to make constitutional changes.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)
OCT. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s trade turnover with Russia continued to rise as relations between the two neighbours improves. Geostat, the state statistics agency, said that exports to Russia increased by nearly 18% to $612m in the first nine months of the year and imports from Russia were up nearly 15% at $480m.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)
OCT. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a meeting in Yerevan, leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) agreed to set up a new crisis response centre. The thinking behind the centre is to improve the exchange of information between CSTO members on terrorism. The CSTO includes Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)
ALMATY, OCT. 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After 18 months of rumours, Nurali Aliyev, grandson of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, revealed himself to be the mystery buyer of a 49% stake in Kazakhstan’s telecoms network, Transtelecom.
The 8.9b tenge ($48m at the time) sale was agreed in May 2015, but the identity of the buyer was shielded from the public. At the time of the deal, Mr Aliyev was the deputy mayor of Astana. Kazakhstan’s state-owned railway company, Temir Zholy still holds a 51% stake in Transtelecom.
In an interview with the pro-government Tengrinews website, Mr Aliyev confirmed rumours on opposition websites that he had bought the stake.
“One of the reasons for my departure from the government service was the acquisition of a 49% stake in Transtelecom as part of the privatisation programme,” he said.
Mr Aliyev, 31, quit as deputy mayor of Astana in March this year, saying that he wanted to concentrate on his business commitments. He had held the position since Dec. 2013.
In Kazakhstan, it is fairly com- monplace for senior government members to own stakes in businesses.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)
OCT. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iran and Turkmenistan signed a swap deal to, essentially, send 1b cubic metres of Turkmen gas to Azerbaijan every year.
The deal means that Iran will become a land bridge between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, potentially giving gas supplies to Europe a boost.
Under the deal, Turkmenistan will send 1b cubic metres of gas to Iran’s northern border and Iran will then deliver the equivalent to its border with Azerbaijan.
The swap deal is both an improvement for regional gas transport and an advantageous arrangement for Iran. Iran suffers from gas shortages in its north-east and supplies from Turkmenistan, besides generating transit revenues, will also help reduce this deficit.
For Turkmenistan the deal is an essential part of its diversification strategy. Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan have long touted a pipeline running across the Caspian Sea that could pump Turkmen gas westwards to Europe, as part of the wider Southern Gas Corridor network. This would secure valuable supplies from the region to Europe by giving Azerbaijan’s gas sector, which needs extra gas to fill the prospective TAN- AP-TAP pipeline network, a boost and also allow Turkmenistan to reduce its dependence on China.
The sticking point for a Caspian Sea pipeline has been Russia, though.
Russia has repeatedly said that a trans-Caspian pipeline would have to be approved by all littoral states and has, at times, threatened the use of force against unilateral decisions.
This swap deal, potentially, creates a way to send oil shipments from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan, and then on to Europe, using Iran as a land bridge.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)
