MAY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Border authorities in Turkey detained dozens of ethnic Uyghurs who were trying to fly to Northern Cyprus with forged Kyrgyz passports. Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group predominantly from the west China region of Xinjiang, neighbouring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. They have said that they are being persecuted by Chinese officials.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan and Georgia sent a delegation to Greece for the groundbreaking ceremony of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), part of a network of pipelines that will pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, in a show of support for a project that the European Union considers vitally important.
Georgia’s PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili and Azerbaijan’s deputy PM Yagub Eyyubov attended the inauguration event with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, European Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič and Special Envoy at the US State Department Amos Hochstein.
“Georgia, as a transit country, reiterates its commitments to the diversification of energy supplies to Europe and expresses supports for existing and future energy projects connected to the Southern Gas Corridor,” Mr Kvirikashvili said.
The so-called Southern Gas Corridor, a network of pipelines, is scheduled to be completed in 2019 and will send 16b cubic metres of gas to Europe every year.
TAP will ship 10b cubic metres from Greece’s border with Turkey across the Adriatic Sea to Italy. From there it will be pumped to central Europe.
Mr Kvirikashvili said the project “creates a new dimension for economic cooperation and for the security in the region.”
Azerbaijan is an integral part of the project. The Corridor’s pipelines will be filled with gas from its major fields, chiefly Shah Deniz.
Azerbaijan is also invested in the construction and management of the pipelines. SOCAR, the state energy company, owns 20% of TAP. BP (20%), Snam (20%), Fluxys (16%), Enagas (16%) and Axpo (5%) consti- tute the remaining shareholders.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Opposition MPs in Georgia have protested against what they said was a rushed reform of the Constitutional Court that will curtail its power and subvert it to the government.
The ruling Georgian Dream coalition set the final vote on the bill for Saturday May 14, just 14 hours after it had sparked furious arguments in parliament.
The opposition, led by the United National Movement party (UNM), the party of former President Mikheil Saakashvili, said the bill was in effect a punishment against the Constitutional Court for ruling against the Georgian Dream several times in the past few months.
Shalva Shavgulidze, opposition MP for the Free Democrats, said: “The only purpose of this bill is for the ruling party to gain control over the Constitutional Court.”
These charges were rejected by MPs from the Georgian Dream. MP Eka Beselia said that the changes were needed to reduce the previous UNM government’s influence over it. “This Court has to be fully liberated from political influences,” she said.
The bill, now adopted, raised the quorum for the 9-member Court from five to six, effectively making it more difficult for the Court to veto laws supported by the government.
Democracy lobby groups have said that this will make the Court a less effective check on the government’s executive powers.
Under the new law the minimum numbers of judges needed to make a decision was also raised to seven from six, again making it more complicated to pass judgements.
In September, just a few weeks before what will be a fiercely fought parliamentary election, President Giorgi Margvelashvili, will appoint new judges to the Court after two of the sitting judges reach the end of their 10-year terms.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s president, and Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia’s president, agreed to maintain a ceasefire over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region where violent clashes erupted at the beginning of April (May 16).
This was the first time the two presidents had met since four days of clashes killed dozens of people and alarmed international policymakers.
Diplomats from the US, Russia and France, including US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, also participated in the meeting in Vienna.
“The Presidents reiterated their commitment to the ceasefire and the peaceful settlement of the conflict,” the mediators said in a joint statement.
Mr Aliyev and Mr Sargsyan agreed to meet again in June to track the process of the settlement of the conflict.
The importance of the meeting was not the bland statement but the fact that the two presidents were already meeting and talking. The violence had threatened to destabilise the South Caucasus region, which hosts vital pipelines pumping gas to Europe and borders both Russia and Iran, worrying international leaders and policymakers.
Nagorno-Karabakh is officially part of Azerbaijan, but also home to a large Armenian population. An estimated 30,000 people died in fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s. Only a shaky 1994 UN-brokered ceasefire held the peace.
An Armenia-backed army now controls Nagorno-Karabakh, although Azerbaijan has also said it will retake the region.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Construction work on the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) has begun. It will link the Azerbaijani and Turkish sections of the so-called Southern Gas Corridor to Greece and Italy.
The Southern Gas Corridor is the EU and the US’ pet project and will bring Azerbaijani gas to Europe.
This is the culmination of years of planning and fending off rival projects, Russian and European.
But the fundamentals of the energy sector have changed dramatically in the past couple of years. The oil price collapse means that profit margins have dropped through the floor, making it near impossible to invest in major infrastructure projects.
That is unless you’re working on the Southern Gas Corridor. The point is not that the Southern Gas Corridor is more profitable than other pipelines, it isn’t, but that politics is more important than economics on this project.
The drivers of the project want to reduce Europe’s reliance on Russia for gas.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(Editorial from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz telecoms operator Sky Mobile said it has introduced 4G technology across Kyrgyzstan. Sky Mobile, which operates under the Beeline brand, is Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest mobile operator. In September last year, Kyrgyzstan rolled out 4G frequencies. Sky Mobile is a subsidiary of Russia-based and New York-listed Vimpelcom. In its quarterly results this month, it said that Kyrgyz were spending more on their mobiles.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
BISHKEK, MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan became the 77th country to feature in Google Street View, and the first in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, highlighting its relative openness and potentially giving its tourist sector a boost.
Tilek Mamutov, Google’s representative in Kyrgyzstan, said in a Facebook post that the new service will give people around the world the chance to make a virtual road-trip across Kyrgyzstan.
“Now users of Google Maps all over the world can take virtual trips along Kyrgyz roads and discover tourist attractions online,” he said.
Google Street View integrates with the California-based company’s mapping service to allow users to navigate their way though cities at street level with static images.
Mr Mamutov said it took around 1-1/2 years for Google to photograph virtually every road in Kyrgyzstan.
A similar programme was rolled out in some cities in Kazakhstan by Yandex, the Russian search engine, but there is no timeline yet for Google to capture each and every corner of the country.
Google Street View has been criticised for impinging on people’s privacy.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Central Bank said it had given 62b tenge ($186m) in loans from the state’s Pension Fund to around 30 commercial banks, in an effort to boost their liquidity. Kazakhstan’s Pension Fund, previously held at commercial banks, was nationalised between 2013 and 2014. It held up to $20b. Last month, the Central Bank opened a credit line from the Fund for commercial banks.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — So, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the authorities in Tajikistan are using students to promote their causes.
Excellent reporting from our ‘Man in Dushanbe’ has exposed this practice. He has spoken to several students who have said their universities and teachers have forced them to either march in favour of government policies or demonstrate outside the embassies of countries which have irritated President Emomali Rakhmon by giving his enemies sanctuary.
This is a well-worn strategy in the former Soviet Union. When I was a correspondent in Moscow between 2006-9 I reported heavily on the growth of a youth group called Nashi and its various offshoots. Nashi was effectively a massive mobilisation of Russian youth, often whipped up into a frenzy to support various policies promoted by Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev, who was the Russian President at the time.
Their summer camps, set up in the dense forests of northern Russia, were an eye-opener. Pictures of opposition activists dressed up as prostitutes were placed around the site. In Moscow, Nashi rallies were rowdy affairs, nationalistic and with a violent undercurrent.
The movement in Tajikistan hasn’t reached these proportions yet and is less sophisticated but the authorities are still unleashing, while trying to control, the same forces.
It’s a crude, dangerous technique.
BANKING ISSUES
Sticking with Tajikistan, news that the country’s second largest bank has been placed under administration doesn’t come as a surprise. TSB has been listing heavily for a while. The strains on the Tajik economy have just become too great and it was only a matter of time before something gave. The important issue to monitor now is whether this is contagious and other Tajik banks also cave in.
It’s also important to keep the banking failure in context. The Tajik banking system may be weaker than its neighbours but all the Central Asian economies have been under the same pressures. Remittances from Russia have dried up, currencies have halved in value and GDP growth rates are being revised down. These banks were giving out soft loans for years and many of these will have turned bad.
If a bank in Tajikistan effectively says it doesn’t have any more money left, could banks in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan be experiencing the same problem?
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — London-listed Georgia Healthcare Group posted a perky 33% increase in revenues in Q1 2016, sending the Group’s share price up by 5.9% on May 17. In its brief history on the London Stock Exchange, GHG seems to have entered into its best period so far with share prices now firmly above £2. This week, it gained 16.7% to close at 231p on Thursday.
It had started trading in November 2015 at 170p/share, giving early investors a 35% return.
The company was also bullish about its acquisitions in Georgia’s healthcare market.
“We have just completed the acquisition of GPC one of the largest retail and wholesale pharmacy chains in Georgia,” GHG CEO Nikoloz Gamkrelidze said in a statement. “This acquisition supports our desire to be the leading integrated provider in all areas of the [Georgian] healthcare ecosystem.”
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
