JAN. 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan’s Central Election Commission said that nine candidates, including incumbent Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, had registered to stand in a presidential election set for Feb. 12. Mr Berdymukhamedov, standing for his third term, is expected to win. Western observers have never judged a Turkmen election to be free or fair.
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(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)
JAN. 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz workers abroad sent back $1.83b to Kyrgyzstan in the first 11 months of 2016, an 18.6% rise on 2015, media reported quoting the Kyrgyz Central Bank. Remittance flows are vital for Kyrgyzstan and a recession in Russia has severely dented its economy. The Central Bank also said that remittances from Russia in November 2016 were a third higher than in November 2015.
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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)
ALMATY, JAN. 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Kazakh court ordered the arrest of the state pension fund’s top managers on corruption allegations, severely denting the public’s trust in one of the state’s flagship financial organisations.
The arrest of the pension fund’s chairman, Ruslan Erdenaev, the director of financial risk management, Musa Bakhtov, as well as two directors from two different mining companies, is just the latest in a series of high profile corruption cases in Kazakhstan which have even included a former economy minister.
And ordinary Kazakhs, who are already struggling to deal with the impact of a sharp economic downturn that has wiped 50% off the value of the tenge, destroyed jobs and savings, are voicing their frustrations increasingly vocally.
In Almaty, Inna Kisilenko, a mother of a six-year-old boy, shrugged her shoulders.
“Time will tell,” she said. “But honestly I feel doubtful. They [the government] increases the pension age and makes up other things.”
The pension fund arrests were ordered after the Central Bank asked the security services to investigate a deal between the fund and two mining companies worth 5b tenge ($15m) in November.
And the $20b pension fund is a particularly sensitive issue in Kazakhstan. It was created in 2014, when the government forced banks to merge their pension funds into one single state-controlled unit. Kazakhs questioned the motive of such a move. This grumbling turned to outrage when news emerged in the summer that the fund had lent members of the elite cash to finance construction of a shopping centre.
Natalya, 50, summed up people’s feelings.
“I just don’t trust it [pension fund],” she said. “I think it is not right because times are hard. I think about how elderly people survive with their pension money. Everything is getting more expensive, rent, groceries.”
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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)
BISHKEK, JAN. 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tilek Toktogaziev has a vision. The 27-year-old Kyrgyz businessman wants to make farming more efficient and he wants to do it by turning the yurt, Kyrgyzstan’s national icon, into a greenhouse.
Or at least construct greenhouses in the shape of a yurt.
“We often copy models of greenhouses from the Koreans or the Dutch,” he told The Conway Bulletin (Jan. 6). “But they have their own climatic conditions. Even in cold times Kyrgyz people have survived in yurts.”
He has set about designing a greenhouse that will look and function like a yurt – the circular, heavy felt tent-like structure used by nomads to live in during the summer when their horses graze in lush valleys under snow-capped mountains.
Mr Toktogaziev has been building greenhouses since 2012, but it was only in 2016 that he thought of the yurt-shaped greenhouse.
“Out of season, local greenhouses cover 10% of market demand in Kyrgyzstan, whereas 90% of vegetables come from China and Uzbekistan,” he said, indicating market potential.
For now, though, Mr Toktogaziev wants to find foreign investors to help propel his concept onto the world market and also to educate Kyrgyz on the benefits of the greenhouse. He already has local investors and says the first greenhouse will be built in 2017.
It’s an uncertain road. What he is certain about, though, is keeping the national identity of the greenhouses.
“Local thermofelt (produced in a village near Bishkek) will be used to cover yurt-shaped greenhouse roof in nighttime to keep warmth,” he said.
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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)
JAN. 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — John Kerry, the outgoing US Secretary of State, landed briefly in Tbilisi for what was described as a technical stopover. He was en route to Vietnam, the focus of his farewell tour after four years as the US’ top diplomat. Mr Kerry met Georgia’s deputy foreign minister David Zalkaliani at the airport. For Georgia, even a short stop by Mr Kerry is a positive endorsement of its pro-Western agenda.
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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)
JAN. 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Estonian construction company Windoor said that Kazakhstan had refused to pay a 23m euro settlement imposed by Stockholm’s arbitration court last year for reneging on a 2012 deal to build a conference centre in Astana for the Kazakh foreign ministry. Windoor said that it would now take the judgement to an international tribunal in Washington.
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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)
JAN. 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon appointed his eldest son, Rustam Emomali, to be the mayor of Dushanbe, attracting accusations of nepotism. Mr Emomali, 29, previously headed the government’s anti-corruption unit and is head of the Tajik football federation. Analysts have said that Mr Rakhmon is grooming his son to take over from him.
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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)
TBILISI, JAN. 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Calgary-based Zenith Energy completed a share listing on the London Stock Exchange, raising £2.3m ($2.77m) to fund the debt repayment and exploration costs at its oil and gas fields in Azerbaijan, Italy and Argentina.
Zenith Energy signed a production sharing agreement with Azerbaijan’s state-owned Socar in March 2016 to jointly develop the Muradkhanli, Jafarli and Zardab oil producing sites, 240km inland from Baku. They are the biggest onshore oil fields in Azerbaijan and had produced up to 9,000 barrels of oil a day at their peak during the Soviet Union. They now produce around 300 barrels a day.
At the time of the deal Zenith’s CEO, Andrea Cattaneo, said that new techniques and infrastructure investment could reboot the fields and boost production.
Now Zenith has raised more cash to help pay for this exploration.
Commenting on the listing on the London Stock Exchange, Mr Cattaneo said: “We believe that the Company’s listing on the Official List will provide a supportive platform to help us achieve our ambitious growth objectives.”
Zenith Aran Oil Company was the Virgin Islands-registered company set up Zenith Energy to push the Azerbaijani projects forward.
Zenith’s shares in London started trading at 7p but moved to over 10p.
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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)
ALMATY, JAN. 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan, the world’s top uranium producer, pledged to cut uranium output, immediately pushing up the price of the metal by 10%.
The production cut promise, and subsequent price rise, demonstrated just how much influence Kazakhstan has over the global uranium market. It currently produces around 40% of the world’s uranium.
Announcing the 10% cut in production, Kazatomprom chairman Askar Zhumagaliyev, said that 2016 had been scarred by a global oversupply of uranium.
“It will be better for our shareholders and stakeholders to leave these strategic uranium resources in soil, rather than use them in the current situation of oversupply,” media quoted him as saying. “The uranium will be produced when the situation improves in the markets in the coming years.”
Uranium prices collapsed in 2016, hitting a 12-year low of $18/pound in mid-December. This represented a drop of 25% since September.
Analysts blamed a number of factors.
A tsunami in 2011 knocked out the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. Fukushima had been a major buyer of uranium before the accident and knocking it out of the market had triggered an immediate oversupply.
The accident at Fukushima also dented the reputation of nuclear power as a safe and reliable energy source and a drop in global oil prices also switched attention away from nuclear power and back to hydrocarbon-fired power which has dropped in price.
Kazakhstan has also contributed to the glut of uranium as it moved to become the world’s biggest supplier. Kazakh uranium production shifted from 18,000 tonnes in 2010 to 24,000 tonnes in 2016. In 2007, Kazatomprom mined 5,000 tonnes.
After the Kazakh cut announcement, which represents around 3% of global supply, Uranium’s spot price rose to $24.25/pound, its highest since September.
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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)
JAN. 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Clearly worried about the solvency of its commercial banks, the Kazakh Central Bank said it intends to stress test the sector in H1 2017. Oleg Smagulov, the deputy chairman of the Kazakh Central Bank, told the kapital.kz website that it wanted to limit banks’ expose to bad debt. Last month it cancelled KazInvestBank’s licence to operate and unnamed sources also told Bloomberg that Kazkomertsbank, the biggest Kazakh bank, may be looking for a government loan.
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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)
