NOV. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s parliament approved an increase of 96m lari ($40m) in next year’s budget to improve healthcare. The extra cash will be used by the ministry of health to bring in its universal healthcare programme. Introducing universal healthcare is a key policy of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
NOV. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev appeared to be preparing his country for a prolonged economic slump when he ordered the government to triple the amount of debt that it could take on.
He also told the Central Bank that it had to increase the amount of capital that it holds to 500m manat ($478m) up from 10m manat.
Both orders appear to be designed to preempt a sustained economic slowdown. The increase in the amount of debt that the Azerbaijani government can accrue to 4.5b manat and the rise in the Central Bank’s working capital should soften the impact of oil prices staying low.
Like the rest of the region Azerbaijan is trying to cope with a collapse in oil prices.
The price of a barrel of oil has more than halved in the past year. For Azerbaijan, whose economy is reliant on oil sales, the impact has been heavy. It has cut its budget and dropped various infrastructure projects to save cash.
Last week a fire at an internet data centre knocked Azerbaijan off the World Wide Web, highlighting just how fragile and investment-needy some of Azerbaijan’s infrastructure it.
In June, the IMF said Azerbaijan’s economy would grow by only 1.8% this year, a sharp fall from the rapid growth of a few years ago. It also said there would be sluggish growth until 2020. Mr Aliyev’s orders appear to confirm this view.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In its financial results for the first nine months of the year, Kazakhstan- focused Nostrum Oil & Gas said revenues were down 40% to $374.8m. Low oil prices and back taxes dented Nostrum’s financial position. Nostrum is investing around $500m in the GTU3 gas treatment facility, which will increase production to 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) by 2017 from around 40,000boepd.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a move designed to help oil exporters, the Kazakh government said it would cut export duty on a tonne of oil to $40 from $60. Some exporters in Kazakhstan have simply stopped production until either oil prices improved or taxes were cut.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s pipeline monopoly Kaztransgas launched the $3.5b Beineu- Bozoi-Shymkent gas pipeline, five months early. The pipeline is important because it pumps gas from fields in the north-west to urban centres in the south.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Incompetent local administrations have delayed the Kazakh government’s centrepiece $9b Nurly Zhol infrastructure investment policy, Yerbolat Dossayev, Kazakhstan’s minister of economy, said. Nurly Zhol, which means bright path, was announced last year and was supposed to transform the Kazakh economy. It has failed to have an impact.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Azerbaijani government said that it is willing to be involved in an effort to reconcile Turkey and Russia after a Turkish warplane shot down a Russian fighter-jet over Syria earlier this month. Azerbaijan counts both Turkey and Russia as its two closest allies. Worsening relations between Turkey and Russia could potentially be a problem for Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The IMF applauded Kazakhstan’s plans to sell off chunks of up to 50% in 43 high profile state-owned companies.
In a report, the IMF also said that ditching the tenge’s peg to the US dollar in August will push up inflation in the short term.
“The decision to float the exchange rate in August, followed by the introduction of a new policy interest rate (base rate) as the new monetary policy anchor in September, set in motion the process of modernizing the monetary policy framework,” the IMF said in its report.
Under pressure from depressed oil prices and a fall in the value of the rouble, the Kazakh Central Bank dropped its peg to the US dollar in August. The tenge plunged in value.
Strapped for cash, the Kazakh government said earlier this month that it wanted to sell off chunks of its biggest companies to private investors. The plan received a qualified endorsement from the IMF.
“We welcome these initiatives and the authorities’ objective of implementing the privatisation program competitively and in a way that ensures genuine private ownership and control,” it said.
The issue for investors is which stock market the government lists the shares on.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan debt-to-GDP ratio will rise to 30% by the end of the year from 22.5% at the start of the year, media quoted various analysts as saying. Tajikistan’s growing debt ratio highlights the impact of the economic downturn on the economies of Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Tajikistan’s remittances from Russia have fallen 40% this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s energy minister Vladimir Shkolnik said 40,000 people working in the country’s oil and gas sector could lose their jobs next year if energy prices continued to stay low. He said the depressed price of oil had decimated the oil and gas sector.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
