JULY 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan and Georgia signed a deal to establish a direct flight between Tbilisi and Ashgabat from September. If the deal is realised, this will be the first direct flight route between the two countries. Last year, state-owned Turkmenistan Airlines said it aimed to open a direct route to Tbilisi.
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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)
JULY 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ameriabank, Armenia’s largest bank, said it issued $15m in bonds on Armenia’s stock exchange, ahead of a potential IPO. The bonds will mature in just over two years with a coupon of 6.75%. In January, Ameriabank said it was planning an IPO inLondon, after it received an investment of around $100m from international lenders.
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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)
JULY 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Azerbaijan sentenced Fikret Faramazoglu, editor of theinvestgiative jam.az newspaper, to three months in jail for extortion. Jam.az reports on court cases involving government officials, with a focus on the national security department. Media lobby groups say the charges are false.
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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)
JULY 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s ministry of finance said the country’s debt had hit $4b, a level that parliament set in 2014 as the country’s debt ceiling. Foreign debt accounts for $3.7b of this amount. China’s Exim Bank, the World Bank’s International Development Association and the Asian Development Bank are among Kyrgyzstan’s largest creditors. Kyrgyzstan’s debt/GDP ratio has now surpassed 60%, a level that local politicians have said is worrying.
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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)
JULY 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The EBRD said it is about to unlock a $155m loan to Georgia’s fertiliser producer Rustavi Azot. The loan will be part of a $175m funding programme to modernise its production line and reduce the factory’s emissions. RustaviAzot, located 25km south of Tbilisi, employs around 2,000 workers and has an output capacity of up to 220,000 tonnes of ammonia per year. In March, the plant faced closure for failing to pay its gas bill.
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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)
JULY 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Dutch prosecutors asked a court in Amsterdam to confiscate €300m ($333m) from Gibraltar-registered Takilant, a company linked to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbekistan’s president. Takilant allegedly received bribes in 2007/8 from Sweden’s Telia Company (then called TeliaSonera) and Russia’s VimpelCom to award mobile licenses in Uzbekistan. Dutch prosecutors asked the court to impose a €5m ($5.5) fine on Takilant and seize its 6% stake in Ucell, an Uzbek subsidiary of Telia Company. VimpelCom is registered in the Netherlands.
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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)
DUSHANBE, JULY 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan handed a $3.9bn contract to Italy’s Salini Impregilo to build the Rogun dam and hydroelectric power plant, a controversial project that sits at the heart of the country’s future energy production.
Salini Impregilo, Italy’s biggest construction company, said it had already received funding of $1.95b for the construction of a dam on the Vakhsh river, which will become the tallest in the world at 355m. A company spokesman said that work would start soon.
“The idea is to have two of the six turbines start producing energy for sale by 2018 in order to raise funding to complete the project,” the company said in a press release.
The Rogun dam project is controversial because it is opposed by down- stream Uzbekistan which worries that the complex will divert water away from its cotton fields. Environmentalists have also complained about the damage the dam will cause to the region’s lush valleys and human rights activists have exposed the forced eviction of thousands of people from the area.
Still, for Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, the Rogun dam has become one of his pet projects. In 2011, he received a major boost when the World Bank endorsed it in two feasibility projects.
Around 70% of Tajikistan’s energy production comes from hydroelectric power stations. Once Rogun comes online, Tajikistan could become a hub for the region. It already plans to export electricity to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Salini Impregilo has built 250 dams worldwide and in August 2015 it won a $575m contract to build the Nenskra hydropower plant in Georgia.
The company said it will build six power stations atRogun, with a total capacity of 3,600MW, roughly equivalent to Tajikistan’s current capacity.
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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)
JULY 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Canadian miner Centerra Gold has struck a $1.1b deal with US-based Thompson Creek to buy a majority stake in the company. Centerra’s core asset is the Kumtor gold mine in eastern Kyrgyzstan. The move could be seen as an effort towards diversification as Thompson Creek owns mines in North America. The Kyrgyz government’s representatives on the Centerra board voted against the deal with Thompson Creek.
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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)
JULY 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom will seek $5b in compensation at the international arbitration court in Stockholm from Turkmenistan for what it has said was the illegal and unilateral termination of a gas supply contract, sources told the Kommersant newspaper. Turkmenistan and Gazprom rowed in 2014 and 2015 over prices for Turkmen gas imports to Russia.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)
JULY 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s Central Bank approved the sale of the local subsidiary of Britain’s Royal Bank of Scotland to Russian lender Expobank, owned by Igor Kim. The deal had been announced in June. Earlier this year, Mr Kim bought RBS’s Russian subsidiary. The sale of RBS is considered important for Kazakhstan’s ailing banking sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)
