APRIL 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Year-on-year economic growth in Georgia accelerated to 5% in the first quarter of 2017 because of an increase in exports and remittances, the statistics service said. The rise beats the Georgian government’s expectations of a 4% rise for the whole of 2017.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
MAY 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Despite a fall in oil price to $48.48 on May 4 and $49.10 on May 5 (that’s the price of a barrel of Brent) the Azerbaijani manat managed to regain some of the ground it has lost in the past few weeks.
Oil and gas are the driver of the Azerbaijani economy but although prices have fallen from around the $55 mark that OPEC has been targeting the manat was trading at 1.6972/$1, near recent highs.
As the graph shows, since the beginning of April the manat has gain 2.2% against the US dollar while oil prices have fallen by 5.6%. The main reason for the slump in oil prices is a concern about growing US stockpiles of oil.
On the equities side of the markets, KAZ Minerals, formerly called Kazakhmys has had a bumpy ride. It shares surged after strong Q1 results showed that output had grown. It hit a 5-week high of 503.5p on May 1 only to fall heavily in the following few days. A sharp drop in the price of copper, its main export, forced down its share price to 445.6p by May 5.
This was a heavier fall than the fall in the price of copper which dropped 5% to $252.85/lb. The fall in copper prices was linked to concern over China’s slowing industry and the failure of US President Donald Trump to deliver on promises to support copper prices.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
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)
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)
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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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
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)
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)
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)
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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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
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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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
