APRIL 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ratings agency Fitch said Kazakhstan’s GDP will shrink by 1% in 2016 and the value of assets owned by Samruk-Kazyna, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, will decline by $3b, or 5%. Fitch’s accounting is more pessimistic than previous government calculations, which forecast marginal GDP growth for 2016.
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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)
APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR said it is eyeing expansion in both Ukraine and Turkey’s petrol distribution sector. This week, SOCAR said it is opening eight petrol station in Kiev. Last week SOCAR said it was in talks to buy OMV Petrol Ofisi, the Turkish subsidiary of Austria’s OMV.
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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)
APRIL 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A regional economic downturn has dented Armenia’s imports in 2015, data from the state Statistics Committee showed. Car imports shrank by 38% to 27,300 last year, compared to 2014. Oil imports shrank by 8%. A region-wide currency crisis has affected purchasing power in the South Caucasus and Armenia’s trade numbers reflect this.
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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)
APRIL 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Turkmen energy ministry said it plans to produce 450,000 tonnes of compressed natural gas (CNG) this year, betting on the high demand for fuel in neighbouring countries. The Turkmen government doesn’t generally publish data on its CNG production, but the tone of the release showed that this might be an increase compared to last year.
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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)
APRIL 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Mihran Poghosyan, formerly Armenia’s Chief Compulsory Enforcement Officer, resigned after his name appeared linked to offshore accounts that Armenian media said created a conflict of interest with government tenders.
Mr Poghosyan’s name emerged in leaked documents from the Panama- registered Mossack Fonseca law firm, linking him and his relatives to real estate, brokerage and import firms which have won government tenders. He had previously said he had dropped his businesses before joining the public service.
His resignation is unique in the region. Officials previously targeted by investigative dossiers generally managed to keep their positions.
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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)
APRIL 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – When they meet, Nursultan Nazarbayev and Islam Karimov want to show unity between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
But this is often just a facade.
The reality is that the two leaders clash and vie for influence over Central Asia. After all, Kazakhstan is the largest Central Asian country by territory, while Uzbekistan is the most populous.
Last Friday, Tashkent was the final stopover in an international foray by Mr Nazarbayev that had taken in Istanbul and Tehran as well. Mr Karimov seemed happy to receive his neighbour and said the two countries “need to synchronise watches” and work more closely together.
The friendliness and the smiles that the leaders exchanged during the meeting, however, is not a sign that the long-standing rivalry between the two neighbours has subsided. Instead it is a reflection of the economic situation that they find themselves in. They have to try to work together to deal with a worsening economic outlook.
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(Editorial from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)
APRIL 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Corporate governance and transparency activists in Central Asia and the South Caucasus have a scalp, finally.
Mihran Poghosyan was forced to resign from his post as Armenia’s Chief Compulsory Enforcement Officer after being tracked as the owner of off- shore companies that had won government tenders. This was considered a conflict of interest.
If true, the revelation, which emerged from the so-called Panama Papers leak, means that Mr Poghosyan had lied when he said that he had dropped his business interests before assuming office.
And, in a rare move for a senior official in the region, he resigned and said he will fight a legal battle in court to demonstrate his innocence.
The Panama Papers still have some distance to run and it is likely that more revelations will come out about senior officials and government leaders in the region.
What is far less likely, though, is that these revelations will trigger more resignations.
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(Editorial from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)
APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Halyk Bank, Kazakhstan’s second- largest bank, said it has launched a new banking subsidiary, Altyn-i, which will operate a digital-only model. Altyn-i will operate under Altyn Bank, the successor of HSBC Kazakhstan, that Halyk Bank bought in March 2014 for $176m.
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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)
APRIL 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Georgian parliament adopted a new tax bill taken from the so- called ‘Estonian model’, which mandates corporate tax to be imposed only on distributed profits. The government forecasts a loss of 600m lari ($260m) in 2017, the first year of the new tax regime. “This loss is expected to be fully compensated by economic growth,” deputy finance minister Lasha Khutsishvili told MPs.
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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)
APRIL 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – TALCO, Tajikistan’s aluminium smelter, said it agreed to supply 200,000 tonnes of aluminium per year to Glencore, a Swiss-based commodities trader. This is an increase of almost 23% compared to the previous deal which expires later this year. TALCO also said it increased its aluminium production by 17% in the first quarter of 2016, compared to the same period last year.
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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)
