Category Archives: Central Asia & South Caucasus News

Sweden’s Telia accuses Tajikistan of slapping it with bogus tax bill

JAN. 17 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Telia Company, the Swedish telecoms company, accused the Tajik government of posting a bogus tax claim against its Tajikistan-based subsidiary Tcell.

In a statement, the head of Telia’s Eurasia division, Emil Nilsson, said that the tax authorities in Tajikistan had handed Tcell a claim for May 2015 to June 2016 of 155m somoni ($19.6m) — more than the company’s entire revenue for 2015.

“We are very concerned with the situation which we believe is totally unacceptable,” Mr Nilsson said.

Central Asia governments have previously tried to raise revenue by slapping large fines for tax violations on Western companies. And this is exactly what Telia, in its abrupt statement, said was the scenario currently playing out with the Tajik authorities.

“The Tajik operator Tcell has appealed what is considered to be an illegal tax claim,” it said in the statement entitled ‘Telia appeals illegal tax claims in Tajikistan’. “The authorities in Tajikistan are basing their tax claim on revenue that Tcell has never generated, so called ‘un- realised revenue’.”

The Tajik authorities may feel that Tcell is vulnerable. Telia is trying to offload its businesses in Central Asia and the South Caucasus after a corruption scandal in Uzbekistan was uncovered that tarnished Telia’s global image and damaged Central Asia’s reputation for governance.

In September 2016, Telia agreed to sell its 60% stake in Tcell to the Aga Khan for $39m. The Aga Khan already owns 40% of the company.

In its statement, Telia said that it had expected the deal to be signed off by the Tajik authorities by the end of 2016. This has been delayed, though, without clear reason, Telia said.

The Tajik authorities have not commented on either the tax-linked fine or the delay in granting permission for Aga Khan to buy Telia’s stake in Tcell.

Tajikistan’s economy has been hit hard by a recession in Russia, making finding potential buyers for Tcell difficult.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)

Two new opposition parties emerge from one in Georgia

TBILISI, JAN. 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Two new parliamentary minority factions — European Georgia and European Georgia for a Better Future — have emerged from the group of 21 MPs who quit the UNM opposition bloc earlier this month, leaving the once all-powerful party of former president Mikheil Saakashvili barely surviving.

The party split did not take people by surprise. Disagreements among party members had become increasingly vicious and public, especially after the UNM’s crushing defeat in October’s parliamentary election. Many of the arguments focused on whether the divisive, bombastic Mr Saakashvili, who now lives in exile in Ukraine, should still play a role in the UNM.

In an email interview with The Conway Bulletin, Akaki Bobokhidze, one of the MPs who left the UNM, said that Mr Saakashvili, who was president from 2004 until 2013, was now a political hindrance.

“Saakashvili thinks that it is not possible to defeat Bidzina Ivanishvili [the patron of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition] and to change the government through elections,” he said.

“There is a difference in how those who stayed and those who left evaluate the past and the errors that the UNM made, especially in the human rights field. The two groups take considerably different views of the party’s future.”

The 56-year-old Mr Bobokhidze is one of the most experienced MPs in parliament having won his seat in 2001 as a member of the now defunct Initiative Group. Known for his fiery temper, he has been involved in brawls inside parliament.

Mr Bobokhidze’s had been a staunch ally of Mr Saakashvili and it was clearly with some reluctance that he agreed to split from the main UNM party. It was only in December that he was urging the party to unite around Mr Saakashvili.

“Saakashvili is the politician that made the corrupt post-Soviet Georgia into a successful country. Regardless of his position in the party, I hope he will remain a successful politician in Georgia’s political history,” he said in his interview.

Mr Bobokhidze said the new parties’ focus would be on winning control of local councils at municipal elections later this year and then concentrating on building alliances to win back power in parliamentary elections scheduled for 2020.

And this collaboration could still that the remaining UNM parliamen- tarians, Mr Bobokhidze’s former col- leagues, have a role to play.

“Our new party is open for collaboration with all the parties that shares our values and think that the informal governing of Ivanishvili is damaging our country,” he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)

Kazakh court cuts Ex-PM jail sentence

JAN. 19 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Karaganda, central Kazakhstan, cut an eight year jail sentence handed out to former Kazakh PM Serik Akhmetov for corruption to 1 year and seven months because of an amnesty granted by President Nursultan Nazarbayev last year to mark the 25th anniversary of Kazakhstan’s independence. Akhmetov had been PM between Sept. 2012 and April 2014. He was convicted in Dec. 2015. Under the new term, he should be due to be released shortly.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)

Turkish police arrests Uzbek gunmen

JAN. 17 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkish police captured the main suspect, an Uzbek national called Abdulkadir Masharipov, behind a New Year’s eve attack on an Istanbul nightclub that killed 39 people. Masharipov has, reportedly, already confessed to the killings. The Turkish authorities said that he had received training from the IS radical militant group.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)

Terrorism threat drops in Kazakhstan

JAN. 16 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s National Security Council dropped the threat level of a major terrorist attack from yellow. The Security Committee did not give a reason for dropping the threat from moderate. It was raised to moderate or yellow in June and extended in August. Kazakhstan had always intended to drop the threat level in January.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)

Kazakh car manufacturing slides

ALMATY, JAN. 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Car manufacturing in Kazakhstan fell by around a third in 2016 to 8,397, dragged down by a stagnant economy.

The disappointing data, released by the Kazakh state statistics committee, is even more stark when laid alongside earlier, pre-economic downturn aspirations. In 2013, with oil prices hovering above $100/barrel, double today’s prices, and with domestic consumer demand buoyant, foreign carmakers were lining up to cut deals with local producers to get their models into the market.

Back then, industry officials were predicting that Kazakhstan would produce over 50,000 cars in 2014.

The economic downturn been so devastating on Kazakhstan’s industrial base, that the government has said that it will step in and subsidise the car industry.

Kazakhstan’s Auto Business Association said that official car dealers’ sales sharply dropped in 2016 to 46,712 cars from 97,469 in 2015.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)

Agriculture investment rises in Kazakhstan

JAN. 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan increased investment in its agriculture sector by 50%, in US dollar terms, in 2016, media reported quoting a senior official at KazAgroFinance. Tuleugazy Seisenovm described as general manager of Assets of the Inspection Department at the state-owned KazAgroFinance, said that the government had spent $686m on investments in agriculture this year compared to $446m in 2015. Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev has ordered his officials to diversify investment away from the dominating oil and gas sector.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)

Gulf Air to fly to Georgian capital

JAN. 17 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Gulf Air, the national carrier of Bahrain, said it will start up a three- times a week service to Tbilisi. The move is just the latest announcement from an international airline to connect with Tbilisi. In December Qatar said it would fly to Tbilisi four times per week. Passenger numbers at Tbilisi airport have increased by 50% from 2010. It is building a new arrivals terminal to deal with the larger passenger flow.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)

Armenia’s inflationary data shows price drop

JAN. 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Inflation data from Armenia’s national statistics office showed prices dropped in 2016 by an average of 1.1%, media reported. The largest fall was in food prices which fell 3.3%. Service prices rose by 1.1%. Deflation has been stalking Armenia for sometime, indicating an economic slowdown.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)

Armenian aviation numbers grow

JAN. 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Yerevan’s Zvartnots International Airport reported passenger growth of 10.4% in 2016 compared to 2015, media reported. It said that just over 2.1m people had used Armenia’s main airport without giving a reason for the rise.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)f