Category Archives: Uncategorised

Uzbekistan to double fruit and vegetable production

JULY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek PM Shavkat Mirziyoyev said that Uzbekistan aims to double production of fruits and vegetables by the end of 2020. Mr Mirziyoyev said that the country currently produces around 16m tonnes of produce and the government aims to boost output to at least 32m tonnes in the next three years. A word of caution, however. Statistics in Uzbekistan can be easily manipulated for political reasons.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Tajikistan establishes relations with Ecuador

JULY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Makhmadamin Makhmadaminov, Tajikistan’s Permanent Representatives to the United Nations, signed an agreement with his Ecuadorian counterpart to establish relations between the two countries. Establishing diplomatic relations with distant countries is a window- dressing exercise for Central Asian and South Caucasus leaders.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Kazakh C. Bank cuts interest rates

JULY 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s Central Bank lowered its key interest rate by two percentage points to 13%, official media reported. The Central Bank cited higher oil prices, slowing inflation and the volatility in global markets after Britain’s referendum to leave the EU as the main factors leading to the rate cut. This is the second rate cut in just over two months.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Turkmen Union of Industrialists needs cash

JULY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Turkmen Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, a lobby group, has allegedly asked local entrepreneurs to pitch in and aid the government’s budget with donations of up to $100,000, the opposition website Chronicles of Turkmenistan said. The request apparently was outlined during a meeting by the Union’s chairman, Alexander Dadayev. Since 2012, the Union established the Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, a government-linked party.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Azerbaijani miner’s production shrinks by 5.9%

JULY 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijani miner Anglo Asian said production shrank by 5.9% to 33,837 ounces in the first half of 2016, compared to the same period last year. The company, listed in London, said it will keep its production target at 73,000/77,000 ounces for 2016 as it expects a boost in the second half.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Stock market: Anglo Asian Mining

JULY 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Helped by the Brexit impact, shares in Azerbaijan’s Anglo Asian Mining soared at the end of June. A positive outlook has now sent them up again. Its shares closed at 19.5p on Thursday, up 5.4% in one week.

At the end of June, Anglo Asian said it would sell the remainder of its 2016 production as futures, which gave a bullish message to investors, as the company tried to raise cash to pay out some of its debt.

Despite posting a production cut in H1 2016, the company was upbeat because the second quarter outperformed the first.

“The second half of the year has historically been our best performing half due to the seasonally better weather and our production will also benefit from the second SAG mill which is due to start operating next month,” CEO Reza Vaziri said in a statement.

Overall it was a positive week for most Central Asia and South Caucasus-linked stocks, lifted by increased stability in oil and gold prices.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Kazakh court fines opposition newspaper

ALMATY, JULY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a case that media freedom lobbyists say shows how Kazakhstan is muzzling independent media, a court in Almaty ordered the opposition newspaper Tribuna/ Ashyk Alan to pay 5m tenge ($14,836) in damages to government official Sultanbek Syzdykov after it described him as corrupt for stealing 23m tenge ($68,249) from the budget of the 2011 Asian Games.

Although police launched an investigation into Mr Syzdykov, the court ruled that the newspaper could not describe him as corrupt because he had repaid the amount he had stolen.

Denis Krivosheyev, the Tribuna journalist who wrote the story, said that the verdict was nonsense.

“This government official was convicted of corruption,” he told reporters outside the court. “It is a fact that no one denies.”

Western government and media freedom groups have accused Kazakhstan of cracking down on free speech. Earlier this year, Guzyal Baidalinova, editor of the opposition Nakanune.kz website, was convicted of slander against Kazkommertsbank, Kazakhstan’s largest bank. She was released from prison, also on July 12, although her guilty sentence remains.

The government has cracked down on the media this year, partly as a reaction to a worsening eco- nomic outlook and to increasing unrest in the country.

Yermurat Bapi, a trustee of the journalists’ union in Kazakhstan told The Conway Bulletin that the media environment was worsening.

“This authoritarian system that was developed over 15 to 20 years has become obsolete, it is dying and with its last gasp is trying to preserve and protect itself through bans, persecutions and the courts,” he said.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Kyrgyz Election Commission unseats MP

JULY 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s Central Election Commission unseated MP Jyrgalbek Samatov after proving he had used fake documents to lodge his candidacy for a parliamentary election in October last year. The government’s election watchdog found that Mr Samatov had not relinquished his double Russian-Kyrgyz citizenship ahead of the election, which made him automatically unelectable. Mr Samatov later said he would sue the Commission.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

ADB sends loan to upgrade Azerbaijan’s electricity

JULY 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After lengthy negotiations, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) decided to loan $750m to Azerbaijan, to co-fund improvements to the country’s power distribution sector.

The aim is to connect peripheral regions outside Baku, which suffer from chronic system losses, to the main grid and reduce inefficiency and waste. But with electricity generation falling, Azerbaijan needs to put more attention and effort towards its upstream power sector, rather than the downstream.

It’s true that Azerbaijan is self- sufficient and produces all the electricity it consumes domestically, as the ADB also said.

The worry is rather on the shrinking margin of extra production allocated to exports.

In 2015 electricity exports halved compared to the previous year according to Azerbaijan’s customs agency. Azerbaijan exported 276.8m kWh of electricity in 2015 against 588.3m kWh in 2014.

And the problems continued this year.

In the first half of 2016, electricity generation at Azerlight, the country’s main producer, fell by 6%, compared to the same period last year, to 10.8b kWh. Consumption, on the other hand, continued to grow exponentially at annual rates of 5-9% since 2010.

For quite some time Azerbaijan has said it wants to export more electricity to its neighbours Turkey and Iran, a power export target that seems in vogue across the region currently.

Now this option seems to be falling off the priority list as the government has become increasingly worried that Azerbaijan could soon need external help to fulfil its domestic demand.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Azerbaijan and Armenia peace talks closer, says Lavrov

JULY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said that a peace agreement on Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that Armenia-backed forces and Azerbaijan have fought over, could be closer than ever. Mr Lavrov met with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev in Baku a week after meeting Armenia’s foreign minister Eduard Nalbandyan. Russia has mediated between the two governments after clashes erupted in April, breaking a 20-year ceasefire.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)