Category Archives: Uncategorised

Azerbaijan to cut funds for overseas study

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan is phasing out a programme that funded overseas study for undergraduates in order to save money during an increasing vicious economic downturn.

Mikhail Jabbarov, Azerbaijan’s minister of education, said funding for bachelor level programmes has dried up.

“The ministry is developing a new format of the program, which envisages education at foreign higher educational institutions only for PhD and Master’s Degrees,” Mr Jabbarov told media.

The government’s stated objective is to attract more foreign professors to Azerbaijan to allow undergraduates to receive high-level tuition without having to study abroad.

What the government cannot openly say is that the programme has become unsustainable because of a sharp drop in oil prices that has dragged down its economy.

The ministry of education’s overseas undergraduate programme is one of two channels that Azerbaijani youth can use to access scholarships to study abroad.

SOFAZ, the country’s oil fund, had also established an eight-year programme in 2007 to fund education abroad. But that programme is now being wound up and is unlikely to be extended.

In the first quarter of 2016, SOFAZ said it spent 5m manat ($3.3m) paying fees for Azerbaijanis studying abroad.

Analysts have said that if both programmes were cut, Azerbaijan would, effectively, be isolating itself from the West.

The government has already cut several domestic social projects, including updating broadband internet across the country and investments in care homes, roads and railways, to cut costs.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Kazakhstan’s wealthiest men owns Nurbank

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Rashit Sarsenov, one of Kaza- khstan’s wealthiest men, said that he was the real owner of JP Finance Group, an Almaty-registered company that officially owns 82.8% of Nurbank. Measured by assets, Nurbank is the 15th biggest bank in Kazakhstan. Mr Sarsenov’s sister was previously listed as JP Finance Group’s owner. In November 2015, Mr Sarsenov’s son, Eldar, became the chairman of the bank.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Editorial: Prisoners in Azerbaijan

APRIL 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – International pressure against human rights abuses sometimes works. In a surprise move, Azerbaijan’s authorities allowed Leyla and Arif Yunus, two recently-freed human rights activists, to leave the country. Worsening health had been the authorities’ reason to free the Yunuses at the end of last year. But they still faced a suspended sentence and were banned from leaving the country.

Now, effectively, Azerbaijan’s government is giving them a chance to seek both medical treatment and asylum in Europe.

This has to be cheered. It showed that EU and US pressure can work. It also gave Azerbaijan a way out of a difficult stand-off over its clampdown on opposition activists and human rights workers.

Last month, Azerbaijan also released a handful of activists in an amnesty.

But there is still some way to go. Other journalists and opposition activists are still in Azerbaijani prisons.

The public pressure on Azerbaijan and the behind-the-scenes dialogue that no doubt helped the Yunuses to the Netherlands must be maintained.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Kazakh Kcell reports lowest Q revenue since IPO in 2012

ALMATY, APRIL 20 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s telecoms sector continues to limp through an economic downturn that has knocked consumer confidence and dented sales.

Kcell, the largest mobile operator, said in quarterly results that its year- on-year revenues fell by 17.7% in Q1 2016 to 35.5b tenge ($107m), its lowest since an IPO in 2012.

Prices have fallen in the ultra competitive Kazakh telecoms sector with Sweden’s Tele2 and Altel undercutting the tariffs of the two dominant companies — Kcell, majority owned by Telia Company, and Russia’s Vimpelcom which trades under the Beeline brand. Telia Company is the rebranded name for TeliaSonera.

Tele2 and Altel completed their long touted merger in February.

A combination of low oil prices and a recession in Russia has triggered an economic downturn in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Consumer spending is down and companies are laying off workers.

Kcell CEO Arti Ots highlighted the impact of the poor economic conditions in a statement alongside the quarterly results.

“As expected the first quarter of the current year has been challenging,” he said.

“We are not seeing any significant signs of a market recovery, but there have been some indications that the intense downward pressure on pricing we have experienced in recent years is starting to ease.”

In Q1, Kcell said it lost 9% of its subscribers. More importantly, perhaps, Kcell said that the average revenue per user fell by 7% despite a strong uptake in data traffic.

In her own quarterly results, Tele2 CEO Allison Kirkby confirmed that the company had grabbed market share and that revenues had grown but also that Kazakhstan’s turbulent economy had dented profits.

“EBITDA [a profit measure] is impacted by both business expansion and the significant devaluation of the Kazakh tenge,” she said (April 21).

The tenge lost 50% of its value against the US dollar last year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Turkmenistan increases gas to China

APRIL 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan increased gas shipments to China by a third in Q1 2016, Chinese state media reported. According to Xinhua news agency, Turkmenistan exported 10.6b cubic metres of gas between Jan and March 2016 via the Central Asia-China pipeline, which runs through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The total annual capacity of the pipeline is 55b cubic metres.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Tajik government approves President’s Day

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s Parliament approved a bill to establish President’s Day on Nov. 16, official media reported. The day will mark the date that President Emomali Rakhmon assumed office in 1994. President’s Day will not be a public holiday.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Water tariff in Kazakhstan increases by 28%

APRIL 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The cost of running water to Kazakh households was an average 28% higher in March 2016 compared to a year earlier, data from the Statistics Committee showed. The data underlined just how sharp inflation has been in Kazakhstan since a devaluation of the tenge last year. In some areas the price was even steeper. In Aktobe, the price of water has increased by 76%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Kazakhstan’s Ozenmunaigas names new chief

APRIL 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The board of Ozenmunaigas, a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigas, said it named Dauletzhan Khasanov as its new CEO. Mr Khasanov, who is also deputy director of KMG EP, replaced Maksat Ibagarov. In Kazmunaigas’ 2015 annual report Ozenmunaigas was listed as a loss-making venture.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Ban Ki-moon cancels visit to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia

APRIL 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon cancelled a visit to the South Caucasus this week due to an unforeseen emergency, his press service told media. The UN had planned a visit to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in April for Mr Ban. Analysts hoped his tour would have appeased the warring sides around Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory that both Armenia and Azerbaijan claim as their own. Instead Mr Ban planned to travel to Yemen and Syria.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Economic crisis wipes out Kazakh car-making industry

APRIL 15 2016, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) – A sharp economic downturn and a 40% overvaluation of the tenge last year combined to destroy Kazakhstan’s car making industry, new data showed.

The Kazakhstan Automobile Business Association (AKAB), an industry lobby group, said that in the first three months of 2016 Kazakhstan produced 428 cars, a fraction of the 12,450 cars produced a year earlier.

The data highlights the plight of the car making industry in Kazakhstan, which had once been held up as an example of how the country’s industrial base can modernise.

There are three car factories in Kazakhstan – AziaAvto, Saryarka AvtoProm and Avtomashholding. Between them they make cars for Lada, Kia, Chevrolet, Skoda, Hyundai, SsangYong and Peugeot.

None of the three car factories replied to Conway Bulletin requests for comment.

A general economic downturn was exacerbated last year by a disparity between the price of the tenge and the rouble until mid-August, when the Kazakh Central Bank finally allowed its currency to devalue. Between January and the devaluation, the tenge, propped up by the Central Bank, was around 40% over-valued against the rouble.

This had two effects. Kazakhs headed north to buy their new cars from Russian dealerships, undermining domestic sales, and exports to Russia collapsed.

MPs also said a $3,000 registration fee introduced at the beginning of this year on cars built in 2015 has deterred people from buying cars. It was introduced to re-coup lost revenue from Russian cars sold to Kazakhs in 2015.

Car showrooms around Almaty lie empty. There are simply no customers. Markhaba and her family have been considering buying a new car. She explained why they still haven’t one.

“The price of new cars in tenge increased by 20% to 30%, and we are still considering whether we really need to buy one or not.” she said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)