Category Archives: Uncategorised

Georgian wine exports grow

MAY 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia exported 11.6m bottles of wine in 2015, an increase of 45% from 2014, its national wine agency said. Total revenues earned from wines increased by 15% to $26.9m. Wine is an important export for Georgia. It has been heavily marketing its wine and its status as one of the original wine-making countries. Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan are the biggest markets for Georgian wine.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Romania seizes Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigas refinery

ALMATY, MAY 6 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) – Prosecutors in Romania ordered the seizure of the Petromidia refinery part-owned by a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigas as they re-opened an investigation into its privatisation in the 2000s.

The seizure of the refinery comes only a few days after China’s CEFC China Energy Company Limited completed a $680m deal to buy a 51% stake in KMG International, the Kazmunaigas subsidiary that owns the Petromidia refinery. Kazmunaigas has been looking to sell off assets and raise cash to help it through a sustained economic downturn.

Rompetrol was renamed KMG International in 2014, although the Rompetrol brand still lingers.

Romanian investigators have been focused on recovering cash they say is owed to it after a deal by the late Dinu Patriciu to buy the Petromidia refinery in 2003 from the state for $760m through Rompetrol, which he owned. He bought the Petromidia refinery from the government not with cash but with a bond.

In 2007, Patriciu sold Rompetrol and its daughter companies to Kazmunaigas for $1.6b.

When in 2010 Rompetrol’s bonds reached maturity, Kazmunaigas refused to pay the government the $600m coupon. Instead it gave the Romanian government a 45% stake in Rompetrol. This was reduced to 18% in 2014 after the Romanian government agreed to sell Kazakhstan a 27% stake for $200m.

KMG International said it had not been involved in any wrongdoing and that this legal case could damage its business plans in Romania.

“These are new developments which may have significant negative impact on KMG’s strategic objectives and development plans in Romania,” the press service said in a statement.

The company later also said it is also ready to take legal action.

“We will analyse the facts about the charges and to what extent such deeds justify the seizure of company assets. If we find that the seizure is not justified, we will challenge those seizures,” Gheorghe Albu, a lawyer for KMG International lawyer, said.

Petromidia is Romania’s largest refinery and is situated near Năvodari on the Black Sea coast.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Kyrgyzstan scraps law that threatened to curtail NGOs

BISHKEK, MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rights campaigners in Kyrgyzstan were celebrating an unexpected victory over a proposed law that would have imposed restrictions on local NGOs with links to foreign funding and influences.

In a sign of the growing maturity of Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary democracy, Kyrgyz lawmakers voted 65 to 46 against introducing a law that was supposedly based on Russia’s so-called foreign agents law. This would have meant that NGOs receiving funding from abroad would have had to register with a special database and agree to increased oversight.

Mihra Rittmann, the Human Rights Watch Kyrgyzstan researcher, said that Russia had used its own version of the law to carry out intrusive searches that have forced some NGOs to close.

“This is an important decision by Kyrgyzstan’s parliament, the Jogorku Kenesh,” she wrote. “Kyrgyzstan is Central Asia’s only parliamentary democracy and today’s rejection of the bill is a reminder of the positive role the Jogorku Kenesh can play in upholding Kyrgyzstan’s human rights commitments.”

Even before the vote on Thursday, the bill had been watered down taking out some of the more controversial wording, such as references to foreign agents with its undertone of espionage.

Still, seeing off the bill altogether is a victory for more liberal, Western- minded Kyrgyz who had worried about the expanding influence of Russia in Kyrgyzstan and the wider region in general.

Zhanar Akayev, an MP for the ruling Social Democratic Party, explained that economics had also played a role in defeating the bill.

“Many international organisations expressed their concern,” he was quoted by media as saying. “We get financial assistance from them in many fields, including healthcare, education, and agriculture, among others. We need this money.”

And this view was largely reflected outside parliament too.

Galina, 25, said she was relieved the bill had been voted down.

“Overall I think that the less the number of laws and regulations, the better it is,” she said. “I was afraid, that the state would use this law for its own purposes.”

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Georgian PM attends anti-corruption summit

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – At an anti-corruption summit organised in London by British PM David Cameron, Georgian PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili said his government will consider creating a public register of company information that includes data on beneficial owners. He also said that the government will set up partnerships with other countries to improve cooperation between different intelligence agencies.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Western Uzbekistan faces salary problems

MAY 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Last year, teachers in Nukus, in western Uzbekistan, received chickens, potatoes and carrots in lieu of their salaries because the authorities had run out of cash to pay them, RFE/RL reported. Wage arrears and liquidity shortages have become commonplace in Uzbekistan. Last week, teachers in Tashkent complained that they had not received salaries for two months. An economic downturn has hit Uzbekistan and its neighbours in Central Asia hard.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Iran swaps oil plans with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan

MAY 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran’s deputy oil minister, Amir Hossein Zamaninia said his country plans to swap oil and gas with Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Currently, Iran relies solely on Turkmen supplies for its northern provinces. In the past few years, Iran has signed short-term swaps with Kazakhstan and Russia. The new plan aims to turn these short-term deals into long-term agreements. Central Asian states, especially Kazakhstan, have been keen to pull Iran into their sphere of economic influence since most sanctions were lifted earlier this year.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Editorial: NGOs in Kyrgyzstan

MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Liberal, Western forces in Kyrgyzstan have scored a major victory by defeating a bill that had the Kremlin’s fingerprints all over it.

Essentially, the so called foreign agents bill aimed to blacklist NGOs which had links with foreign governments and organisations.

This blacklist would have meant more surveillance, checks and interference. It would have put many NGOs, which operate on tight margins and may not be pushing the preferred Kyrgyz government line, into liquidation.

Instead, by mounting a serious-minded campaign and targeting MPs who had a vote on the issue, those against the law were able to at first get it watered down and then scrapped altogether.

This is good news too for Kyrgyzstan’s fledgling parliamentary democracy, only five-years-old last year. It shows resilience and that the system is working. This was democracy in action in Central Asia.

The result of the MPs’ vote may also show that this term’s MPs, voted in last year, are more liberal bunch.

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(Editorial from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Russia complains about Georgian military exercises

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia complained about a military exercise in Georgia involving US and British forces, saying that it was a destabilising influence.

The exercise is the biggest joint NATO-Georgia exercise ever run in Georgia and, for the first time involves heavy US tanks. Georgia has made clear its desire to join NATO and views these exercises as important milestones. Reuters reported that 650 US soldiers were involved in the exercise, 500 Georgian soldiers and 150 British soldiers.

Russia and Georgia fought a war in 2008 over the rebel region of South Ossetia. Relations have improved but both sides are wary.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

GM Uzbekistan’s car sales to Russia fall in April

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Sales of GM Uzbekistan’s cars to Russia fell 5% in April compared to the same month last year, dashing hopes raised last month that sales were starting to improve.

Russia is GM Uzbekistan’s biggest market, leaving it badly exposed to a Russian economic recession.

Car sales to Russia had started to pick up in February and March for GM Uzbekistan, a joint venture between US-based GM and state owned UzAvtosanoat, raising hopes that the worst of the economic down- turn had been weathered.

But data from the Moscow-based Association of European Businesses (AEB), which publishes monthly sales numbers in Russia, said GM Uzbekistan had sold just 1,571 units in April, down from 1,677 in March. As a comparison, this is around a third of the sales number of the same month in 2012.

Joerg Schreiber, AEB chairman said, that the outlook wasn’t any better.

“The volume of absolute sales [in Russia] has fallen to the lowest level in 10 years,” he said in a statement.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Huawei and Uzbek telecom start JV

MAY 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – China’s Huawei Technologies and Uztelecom, Uzbekistan’s state owned telecoms company, said they will start a joint venture, called Broadband Solutions, to produce telecoms kits. The new company will be based in the Jizzak special economic zone, around 100km northeast of Samarkand. Uztelecom will take a 51% stake in the joint venture, Huawei will own the rest. The deal valued the company at around $6m.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)