NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran’s oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, said trade between Iran and Turkmenistan would boom as the country opened up and made more deals with its neighbours in Central Asia. Local media quoted him as saying that Turkmen- Iranian trade measured $4b last year. He said bilateral trade worth $60b was possible within a decade.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
OCT. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Net profits at Kazakhstan’s Eurasia Bank fell to 2.6b tenge ($9.1b) in the first nine months of the year, a fall of 67% from the same period in 2014. The bank, owned by businessmen Alexander Mashkevich, Alijan Ibragimov and Patokh Chodiev, declined to disclose further details of the results. In 2014, net profit fell by 13% compared to 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Tajik registered Antonov-12 cargo plane crashed in south Sudan, killing 40 people. The plane had been owned by a Tajik company called Asia Airways but operated by an Armenian company called Ala International. (See page 8 for more)
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan built a supersized glass and aluminium yurt to celebrate the city of Mary’s position as 2015 Culture and Arts Capital of the Turkic World, media reported. The yurt, which can hold up to 3,000 people, drew criticism. Central Asian governments are given to grandiose projects, projecting an image of being out-of-touch.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Photographs and anecdotal evidence from Uzbekistan showed that queues for petrol at service stations are growing longer and longer. A collapse in the value of the Uzbek sum has hit the Uzbek economy hard. Uzbekistan also has a shortage of refining shortages.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The number of abortions in Georgia increased by three times between 2000 and 2012, new statistics published by Geostat showed. The statistics did also show a dip of 14% from 2012 – 2014. The abortion rate is significant in Georgia because of its generally traditional, church orientated society.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — London-traded KMG EP said sustained low oil prices had halved revenues in the first nine months of the year compared to the same period in 2014, a heavy warning for Kazakhstan that the near-term outlook for its economy is poor.
KMG EP saw its revenues fall, in US dollar terms, by 54% to 349b tenge ($1.8b), mirroring a 48% fall in Brent oil prices. Net profit dropped to 138b tenge ($703m), a fall of 49% in US dollar terms.
And it said that oil prices would remain weak.
“There is a risk that prices for the domestic market supplies for October to December 2015 will be significantly lower than the prices set in September 2015,” KMG EP said in the report.
KMG EP is among the top three producers of oil in Kazakhstan and participates in several international oil and gas projects.
It’s one of the Kazakh government’s main cash earning companies and its financial performance acts as a barometer on Kazakhstan’s economy. If Kazmunaigas, and KMG EP, is doing well, the Kazakh economy is generally doing well too.
KMG EP also said that in tenge terms, its salary costs have increased by 22%.
“This was largely due to an indexation of salary for production personnel by 7% in January 2015, the introduction of a Unified System of Wages for production employees from April 2014 onwards, a 10% increase in wages related to the devaluation of the Tenge from April 2014 onwards, and an increase in production bonuses from 25% to 33% for supporting production personnel from September 2014 onwards,” KMG EP said.
The Kazakh Central Bank stripped the tenge of its peg to the US dollar in August, effectively allowing the currency to devalue by 25%,a second devaluation in two years which has halved the tenge’s value. Businesses have had to promise employees salary increases to compensate for the fall in the value of the tenge, pushing up inflation across the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
OCT.31/NOV. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan as part of a tour of Central Asia. In Bishkek, Mr Kerry wanted to persuade the government that despite quitting its airbase, the US was still interested in Kyrgyzstan. In Dushanbe, Mr Kerry told the government to ease up on its crackdown of opposition parties.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Keen to boost its imports of gas, Georgian energy minister Kakha Kaladze said that Georgia could buy Iranian gas through either Azerbaijan or Armenia. Mr Kaladze is due in Tehran later this month. Last month he started talking to Russia’s Gazprom about buying more gas, sparking anger from many ordinary Georgians. Georgia and Russia fought a brief war in 2008.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev flew to Tbilisi for a meeting with Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili where the they were expected to discuss a so called strategic partnership. Georgia and Azerbaijan have grown increasingly close because they share major oil and gas pipelines running from the Caspian Sea to Turkey and then on to Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
