SEPT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia will meet in New York on the fringes of the UN General Assembly on Sept. 24/25, media quoted Azerbaijani foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov as saying. Azerbaijan and Armenia are still officially at war over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Lithuanian Railways will open a representative office in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana, the company said in a statement. “Kazakhstan is Lithuania’s major railway partner in Central Asia. Stasys Dailydka, a director at Lithuanian Railways, said trade volumes, mainly minerals, had been increasing rapidly over the past six years.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a speech at a World Economic Forum event in the Chinese port city of Dalian, Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili described ties with China as very strong. China has invested heavily in Georgia, building up infrastructure and trade links. It views the South Caucasus as part of its longer term strategy.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A senior US military officer said he wanted US forces to increase the number of exercises they hold with Georgia. Media quoted Lieutenant General Ben Hodges saying he wanted to increase the “quantity” and “frequency” of drills between the two countries. The Georgia-US drills have irritated Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Venezuela, one of the few countries which has recognised the self-declared independence of the Georgian rebel states, has signed an agreement with Abkhazia on visa-free travel, media reported. The Georgian foreign ministry denounced the agreement.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Abat Nurseitov resigned as general director of KMG EP, the London-listed unit of Kazakhstan’s state oil and gas company. Mr Nurseitov had been general director since January 2013. Dastan Abdulgafarov, the CFO, was appointed interim CEO.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian energy company Lukoil said it is negotiating with Korea Eximbank, South Korea’s state export credit agency, on funding for its projects in Uzbekistan. Lukoil is building a $2.66b gas processing plant in Kandym, 100km south-west of Bukhara, with South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering and is developing several projects along the Turkmen-Uzbek border.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government said a new tax on the extraction of groundwater is justified despite complaints from soft drinks producers, as companies have previously underpaid for water. “It is important to note that we have a serious shortage of drinking water in Kazakhstan,” Shafkhat Kudabayev, of the State Revenue Committee, told vlast.kz. The soft drink industry lobby groups have said the new tax will put companies out of business.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 3 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Following earlier electricity price rises in Georgia’s regions, the state regulators approved a similar price increase in the capital.
For the Georgian Dream, the ruling coalition, the price rise means they have barely been able to fulfil one of their promises from the 2012 parliamentary election – to cut the price of electricity and to keep it low.
But, as Akaki Tsomaia, economics professor at the University of Georgia explained, the plunging value of the lari had forced the regulators to agree to the price rise.
“Georgia is experiencing a 45% depreciation of its currency against the US dollar. Electricity and gas providers in Georgia have no other way than to increase the price of these services. Otherwise we will definitely have a major electricity shortage,” he told the Bulletin.
Still, this assessment, which is widely shared, didn’t stop the opposition UNM party blaming the coalition.
“The absence of professionalism led us to this point,” UNM’s deputy chairperson Nika Melia told TV broadcaster Rustavi-2.
Electricity prices have triggered protests in the region, most notably in Armenia where thousands protested earlier this year and forced the government to waive price rises.
In Georgia which is known for its street level politics, however, the population seems to have accepted the rise more quietly although some people did expect protests shortly.
Vladimir, an IT specialist walking along Tbilisi’s central promenade said: “People will probably start next month once they get bills.”
Irakli, 37, who was waiting at a bus stop, agreed but he said that politics, was the key driver of social unrest.
“We’ve taken to the streets so much in the recent two decades, but for other reasons,” he said. “But it all accumulates and only needs one non- social spark to explode.”
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – SOCAR confirmed that it wants to play a role in building a gas-fired power plant in Malta, media reported.
It’s unclear just why SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, would want to build a power plant in Malta but it has an office on the island which it has said it uses to reduce its global tax bill.
SOCAR chairman Abdullayev Rovnag met with Maltese PM Joseph Muscat before a football match between Malta and Azerbaijan to discuss the two countries’ cooperation, local media reported.
There was no more detail from the meeting on the power station.
The Times of Malta, though, reported on SOCAR’s Maltese operations earlier this year. It said that SOCAR had set up a company in Malta in 2007 that acted as the parent company of Geneva-based SOCAR Trading. SOCAR Trading generates billions of dollars each year by trading oil. It saves itself a large chunk of tax, the Times of Malta reported, by booking the profit on these sales in Malta. Malta markets itself as a low tax, offshore base for companies trading in Europe.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
