FEB. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – IMF representatives met with Tajik government officials in Dushanbe to draw up funding plans for the $2b Rogun hydropower plant. The IMF has said that the World Bank-backed Rogun project, strengthening its banking sector and diversifying the economy are priorities for Tajikistan. Down- stream Uzbekistan has lobbied hard against the Rogun dam.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Central Bank raised interest rates by 1 percentage point to 17%, its first monetary policy move for three months. The Kazakh tenge has been sliding in value and the Central Bank has at times appeared powerless to stop this. It has slowly increased interest rates but to limited effect.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tashkent’s state-owned bus company Toshshahartranshizmat has started to trial free wifi on its buses around the Uzbek capital, media reported, a signal of just how ubiquitous wifi has become in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan’s security forces closely monitor internet use. Uzbekistan is considered one of the most repressive countries in the world.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia and Armenia signed a defence deal that ministers said should improve training and strategic planning between the two countries. The deal, signed in Yerevan, is probably most important for Armenia which is still officially at war with Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani officials said that one of its soldiers had died during a shoot- out with Armenian forces in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. They also said that three Armenian soldiers had died in fighting, a claim that the Armenia backed government of the region denied. A cease-fire between Azerbaijan and Armenia-backed fighters around Nagorno-Karabakh is looking increasingly fragile.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – National identity for the countries of Central Asia is still a major issue, far more so than for their neighbours in the South Caucasus.
When independence was thrust on the five Central Asian states in 1991, the leaders of these newly created countries had to build a sense of nation- hood from scratch.
And so they turned to their history books. They dug up some famous names from the past and wrote them up as national heroes and icons.
For Tajikistan, the most significant national hero was Ismail Somoni, the founder of the Samanid dynasty. Tajik officials have pinned their national story, the narrative that they use to give people a sense of nationhood, around the Samanid dynasty. A statue of Somoni dominates central Dushanbe and the national airline and currency are all named after him, as are a host of other institutions and buildings.
Branding is important, even for a country, and Pres. Emomali Rakhmon is probably right to pursue it. He has to make sure, though, that branding doesn’t distract from governing.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(Editorial from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Serikzhan Mambetalin, a Kazakh opposition activist, was freed from prison after issuing an apology for inciting ethnic hatred. Mambetalin and his colleague, Ermek Narymbayev, were jailed at the end of January. Mambetalin’s lawyer told RFE/RL that his appeal process was still ongoing. The Kazakh authorities have clamped down on the country’s beleaguered opposition as the economy has worsened.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Annualised food price inflation in Kazakhstan measured 11.6% for the 12-months to the end of January, the country’s statistics service said. The data highlights just how fast prices have risen in Kazakhstan. It devalued its currency last year, forcing up prices and salaries.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — US oil company ExxonMobil said that it still thinks the giant Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea will re-start production by the end of the year. ExxonMobil also said Kashagan will be one of its four key start-up projects for 2016. Other estimates forecast that repairs to essential pipeline infrastructure could drag on until 2017. ExxonMobil owns 16.81% in the international venture that operates Kashagan.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
JAN. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Emigration from Armenia shrunk its population below 3m for the first time since the 1970s, a psychologically-important threshold and a statistic that highlights a population outflow trend across Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
Armenia’s statistics agency said that the population fell in 2015 by 12,000 people to 2,998,600 people — the lowest level since 1977.
It’s also more evidence of a trend which has seen Armenia’s population shrink by 36,000 in the past five years and by 643,000 since 1991 when it became independent from the Soviet Union.
Armenia has large diaspora populations in France, Russia, the United States and across the Middle East. Most of the outflow is driven by people looking to join relatives in these countries and boost their job prospects.
One of the biggest problems for Armenian policymakers is that most of the people leaving Armenia are young and well-educated. This puts pressure on Armenia’s system with its aging population.
In 2013, the government ordered the State Statistics Committee to investigate the causes and results of this declining population.
There has been some inflow into Armenia over the past few years with ethnic Armenians who had previously lived in Aleppo, Syria, fleeing a civil war.
The Armenian government has accepted around 16,000 refugees from Syria.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
