Category Archives: Uncategorised

Georgian lawyer says police beat him

NOV. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Georgian lawyer accused police of beating him for several hours after he visited a client at a Tbilisi police station, sparking outrage across Georgia’s social media and jibes of hypocrisy against the authorities.

Police brutality is a sensitive political issue in Georgia. The ruling Georgian Dream coalition has accused the previous administration of Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement of presiding over a regime built around repression and fear.

Giorgi Mdinaradze, the lawyer, said that he had been to hospital with bruises and cuts to his face after the beating.

“They [policemen] put my hands in cuffs and I could not even cover face with hands as they were beating me for five or ten minutes,” media quoted him as saying.

Mr Mdinaradze works for Legal Aid, a government funded group that gives legal advice and support to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it.

One of the ruling Georgian Dream’s main challenges against the United National Movement party was a case against former defence minister Bacho Akhalaia. He was sent to prison last year for ordering inmates at a prison to be tortured in 2006 when he was the prisons minister.

Police said that they have opened an investigation into the alleged beating of Mr Mdinaradze, the lawyer. On Nov. 13, Georgian media reported that they had arrested a senior policeman in the case.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)

Foreign currency bank deposits increase in Kyrgyzstan

NOV. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The amount of cash in Kyrgyzstan’s banking system held in foreign currencies jumped by 6.7% to nearly 65% between January and August, the Central Bank said according to Kyrgyz media reports.

This is a steep rise and highlights a lack of confidence in Kyrgyzstan’s som. It has lost around 26% of its value against the US dollar this year despite repeated interventions by the Central Bank to prop it up.

Inflation has also increased, although this has slowed over the past couple of months, pressuring people’s savings.

Interest rates are at a 10%, lower than they were at the start of the year but higher than at any time since 2012.

Like its neighbours, Kyrgyzstan has been struggling to deal with the fallout from a deepening economic malaise which has hit the region. One of its biggest problems has been a sharp drop in remittances sent back to Kyrgyzstan from workers in Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)

Aliyev visits Georgia

NOV. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev flew to Tbilisi for a meeting with Georgia’s President Giorgi Margvelashvili. Officially, the clearly good-natured meeting only yielded promises of a deeper relationship but energy links were likely to have been discussed. Georgia is an important transit country for Azerbaijani gas en route to Turkey and Europe.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)

Armenia cuts interest rates to counter low prices

NOV. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s Central Bank lowered its key interest rate by half a percentage point to 9.75%, its lowest level since January, because of slowing inflation.

The interest rate move highlights the delicate balance that Central Banks across Central Asia and the South Caucasus are having to strike between defending their currencies and stimulating growth to navigate through a deepening economic crisis.

The Central Bank said a drop in commodities prices and slowing global demand had dented price growth.

It said that inflation last month measured 0.4%, compared to 1% in October 2014. Overall annualised inflation measured 1.9% for the 12 months to the end of October.

“The board estimates that this trend will continue in the coming months and will have a deflationary impact on domestic prices,” the Central Bank said of weakening global commodities prices.

Armenia’ currency, the dram, has dropped by 15% this year against the US dollar. Its interest rates had risen to 10.5% in February but prices in Armenia have slowed, dragging down overall inflation.

The biggest problem for Armenia, like most of its neighbours in the South Caucasus is the recession in Russia.

This has hit vital remittance flows and also savaged is key export market. The Armenian dram is now overvalued against the Russian rouble and demand inside Russia has also dropped, hitting overall export potential.

This month, as the Bulletin reports in this week’s Business News, the country’s biggest fish farm business declared itself bankrupt. Its biggest market had been Russia and this market had disappeared.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)

Dal Engineering signs memorandum to build cement plant in Uzbekistan

NOV. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkish construction company Dal Engineering signed a memorandum to start building a new $225m cement plant in Uzbekistan. Dal Engineering will partner with state- owned Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Combine to build a 1.5m tonnes/year plant in the southern region of Surkhandariya by 2017. Slow foreign investment has delayed the project. Once built, the new plant will increase cement production capacity in Uzbekistan by 20%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)

Kazakh Team Astana receives cycling licence

NOV. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – After a four-month-long review linked to a drug doping scandal, Astana Pro cycling team received its World Tour licence. Astana Pro, which is funded by the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna and races in the national colours, has been involved in several doping cases since it was set up in 2007.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)

BP says it is confident Azerbaijan’s ACG oil output will be strong

NOV. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — BP said it expects to maintain last year’s production levels at Azeri Chirag-Guneshli (ACG), the largest oil field complex in Azerbaijan, despite analysts’ predictions that output would fall.

BP, which owns a 35.8% stake in ACG, has been under pressure to ensure that Azerbaijan’s most important oil project doesn’t reduce its output any further.

“We expect that the production on the results of 2015 at the block will not be lower than last year. Current production figures are ahead of the forecasted ones,” Gordon Birrell, BP regional director, told reporters .

Analysts had predicted a drop of 3% in Azerbaijan’s country-wide oil output in 2015 compared to 2014.

In H1 2015, production at ACG declined by 2.3% to 641,000 barrels/day compared to the same period in 2014.

This means that the third quarter report, due in the next few weeks, will have to show an increase in production to cancel out the Q1 drop.

Maintenance work halted operations at West Azeri in May and at Chirag in September. BP said it would carry out further work at Chirag on Nov. 10 for 25 days.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)

Kazakhstan cuts food subsidies

NOV. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In what it described as a push to promote competition, the Kazakh government said it will cut subsidies for bread, petrol, and animal husbandry. In particular, the government will cut subsidies for wheat producers from 2,500 tenge/tonne ($8) to zero. The government may be looking to save money.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)

Kyrgyz President wants change

NOV. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Two years before he steps down as Kyrgyzstan’s president, Almazbek Atambayev, said he wants the country to fully embrace the parliamentary model of governance. Analysts interpreted this as an attempt to shore up power for his Social Democratic party.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)

Georgia tweaks budget to boost health

NOV. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s government wants to tweak the national budget for a second time this year to increase funding for one of its key policies — creating an improved universal health care system.

Finance minister Nodar Khaduri said that increased revenue from tax and a reduction in the regional aid budget would pay for the increase in health care spending.

Earlier this year, the ruling Georgian Dream government submitted a budget which included a drop in revenue raised by taxes, a fall it linked to a regional economic downturn. That thinking has now changed.

The universal healthcare that the Georgian government wants to build is one of their headline policies. It will now absorb around 16% of the health ministry’s total budget.

“It is a successful program and many people apply to use it,” media quoted Mr Khaduri as saying. “So it became necessary to add funds to this program.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)