JAN. 25 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan’s Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov led a delegation to Kabul to sign a trade declaration that both sides said should lift bilateral trade to $1.5b. The deal highlights improved trade relations between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, something that both sides have been working towards.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)f
JAN. 26 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — US car rental company Enterprise, which owns the Enterprise, Alamo and National brands, said it had made a franchise deal with Yerevan- based TravelCar. The deal will expand the brands to Armenia and also to neighbouring Georgia. The deal is part of a global drive by Enterprise to spread its business across the Middle East and Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)f
BISHKEK, JAN. 24 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Kyrgyzstan reiterated a life sentence against ethnic Uzbek rights activist Azimjan Askarov for stirring racial tension in the south of the country in 2010.
Kyrgyzstan has been under pressure from the United States, the United Nations and various human rights groups to free Askarov, but the judge in the court in Bishkek rejected the notion that the original conviction had been unsafe.
Human rights groups said the decision had been politically motivated and that the government was looking for scapegoats for ethnic violence in 2010. Askarov had been arrested in the aftermath of riots in 2010 focused on the southern city of Osh between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks that killed several hundred people.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)
JAN. 24 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A presidential decree in Uzbekistan appeared to suggest that the hated exit visas that ordinary Uzbeks need to be able to leave the country may be scrapped.
If the decree becomes law, it will herald one of the biggest changes in the way that Uzbekistan is governed and change the power and control the authorities can impose over people.
The scrapping of exit visas was just one section of a long document which focused on relaxing identification and travel documents. It said that a decision would be made by the third quarter of 2017. There was no timetable, though, on when it would be implemented.
Government officials later tried to row back on the prospect of the authorities relaxing their grip over ordinary people.
The US-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that its journalists had spoken to several officials at the interior ministry who emphasised that the plan was just a proposal and may not be adopted.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)
JAN. 25 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan’s foreign minister issued a statement complaining about a press release by Tajikistan which said that it wanted to build a railway link to Russia that bypassed Turkmenistan and instead traversed Uzbekistan. The Turkmen statement said that Tajikistan’s press release had been unethical. Uzbek-Tajik relations have improved markedly since the death in September of former Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov. The Turkmen diplomatic note is a reminder the ties between Central Asian countries are often strained and fractured.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)
JAN. 23 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Opposition MPs in Georgia’s parliament have forced a debate on Feb. 3 on the terms of a new gas deal struck with Russia at the beginning of the year, piling pressure on energy minister Kakha Kaladze to reveal details of the new arrangement. Under the deal, Georgia will pay for gas from Russia directly, rather than take a 10% cut of the volume that Russia sends to Armenia. Mr Kaladze has refused to give out details of the deal but his opponents have called it a risk to national security.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)
JAN. 20 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Nakamichi Corporation Berhad, a Malaysian independent oil company, signed a deal with Aktau Transit to invest $146m in two oil fields in west Kazakhstan. The deal commits the two companies to explore the oil fields.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)f
JAN. 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Shares in Kazakhstan-based copper producer KAZ Minerals pushed up to near a four-year high of 449p on Jan. 25 just before bullish 2016 results.
In the results, CEO Oleg Novachuk also said that output growth will continue in 2017.
“I am pleased that we have achieved our copper and byproduct guidance for 2016, a 73% increase in copper output on the prior year, as we successfully ramped up Bozshakol and the Aktogay oxide plant,” he said. “Our growth will continue in 2017 as Bozshakol reaches capacity and we commence production from sulphide ore at Aktogay.”
Mr Novachuk also said that KAZ Minerals’ results had been pushed up by lower-than-expected costs.
The share price of KAZ Mineral, which used to be called Kazakhmys and has been linked closely to the Kazakh elite, has nearly quadrupled in a year far out-stripping a 30% increase in copper prices. For comparison – at the end of 2015 KAZ Minerals’ share price bottomed out at under 100p.
Stock analysts put the increase down to KAZ Minerals’ new plants coming online. Some also indicated that they thought there more value in the stock in 2017 with a buy rating.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)
JAN. 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia agreed to lift restrictions on Tajikistan’s Somon Air flying to the Russian regions after talks in Dushanbe. The routes to Krasnoyarsk, Krasnodar, Ufa and Orenburg by Somon Air are a vital part of the transport infrastructure that allows Tajik migrants to work seasonally across Russia and to send vital remittances home. The Somon Air flights had been banned since mid-December after a row between the two countries’ aviation divisions.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)
JAN. 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s government has bought another chunk of equity in the country’s largest bank, International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), another indicator that its banking sector needs propping up to survive.
IBA issued more shares on Jan. 26, allowing the government to increase its stake in it to 76.73% from 54.96%.
The share purchase appears to fly in the face of a statement by Rufat Aslanli, chairman of Azerbaijan’s financial supervisory agency who said in November that the government would privatise IBA in 2017.
The Trend news agency quoted an IBA statement as saying that the government stake increase was needed to shore up the stability of the bank and to protect it from the downturn. Analysts have been warning that Azerbaijan’s banking sector is particularly fragile with many borrowers unable to repay loans. Azerbaijan’s economy shrank by 3.8% last year and its manat currency has halved in value.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)
