Category Archives: Uncategorised

Currency: Kazakh tenge, Kyrgyz som

SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Have the Kazakh tenge and the Kyrgyz som reached rock bottom yet? This week, the tenge in Kazakhstan suffered another strong fall (-4.4%). The cost of $1 even rose above the psychological rate of 300 tenge on Sept. 16, only to settle back down to around 270 by the end of the week.

The Kyrgyz som also hit a historical high of 70/$1 on Wednesday.

And this despite repeated interventions from both Central Banks, which bought hundreds of millions of dollars in the currency market to support the tenge and som.

At the end of last week, the announcement that Dariga Nazarbayeva, the eldest daughter of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, had been appointed as deputy PM sparked a late round of trade in the dollar market, weakening the tenge. Was this the market saying that they were worried about her promotion? Some analysts said that President Nazarbayev may be grooming her to take over the top job.

The som is struggling because the Russian economy isn’t recovering and the upcoming parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan are upset- ting the market.

In Georgia, the lari lost 2.4%, probably linked to general Emerging Markets weakness.

The Fed hasn’t ruled out the possibility of increasing rates by the end of the year. Such a decision would divert US dollars back to the US economy, away from Emerging Markets. The faltering economies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus need to prepare themselves for the worst.

Tightly-managed currencies in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan remained vir- tually unchanged this week. To maintain the exchange rates constant, central bankers in these countries had to heavily intervene in the currency markets.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Stock market: Centerra Gold, KAZ Minerals

SEPT. 11-18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Canadian mining company Centerra Gold saw its stock price on the Toronto Stock Exchange jump over 16% to 7.34 Canadian dollars, after having slumped in the past three weeks, due to the signing of a new exploration licence in British Columbia. Centerra’s main asset, the Kumtor gold mine, is located in Kyrgyzstan. London listed KAZ Minerals, was down 6% to 152 pence due to low copper prices. Kazakhstan-focused Roxi Petroleum gained 4.4% this week, to 8.75 pence.

Kcell, one of Kazakhstan’s largest telecoms, lost 2% on Sept. 17 after its mother company TeliaSonera said it would leave Eurasian markets.

London-listed Bank of Georgia surged 3.9% this week to 1,907 pence. The GDR stock of Georgia’s TBC Bank lost 6.5% this week in London, down to $9.25 per share, though it had fallen to $9.11 on Sept. 14.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Azerbaijan’s SOCAR revenues to drop

SEPT. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas company SOCAR said it would transfer less cash to the national budget this year because a fall in oil prices had dented its revenues. This is a blow to Azerbaijan which is heavily reliant on revenues from oil and gas for its income.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

BBC criticises Uzbek cotton

SEPT. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The BBC’s Uzbek language news said the authorities in Uzbekistan are forcing pensioners to pick cotton or face a 50% cut in their pension handout. Uzbekistan has previously faced Western criticism over its use of children to pick its cotton harvest. Cotton is a valuable cash crop for Uzbekistan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

BP suspends Azerbaijan’s oil platform

SEPT. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — BP said it will suspend operations at the Chirag oil platform, in Azerbaijan’s sector of the Caspian Sea because of planned maintainence work. BP didn’t specify when Chirag would resume operations. Chirag, together with Azeri and Guneshli, is one of the most important oil fields in Azerbaijan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Comment: To monitor or not, that is the question

SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -Has Europe’s democracy watchdog, the OSCE, shot itself in the foot by deciding not to monitor Azerbaijan’s up and coming parliamentary election?

Certainly it must have been irritating that the Azerbaijani authorities had told the OSCE that it can have barely half the number of monitors it had asked for on the ground. But that feels like scant justification for pulling out altogether.

Instead, this feels personal.

The Azerbaijani authorities have been in menacing mood, pressuring anybody in their way and this has included the OSCE. Earlier this year, the OSCE closed its office in Baku under pressure from the Azerbaijani authorities.

Now it feels that the OSCE has been able to exact some sort of payback by crying foul over monitor numbers, pulling its observation team from Azerbaijan’s Nov. 1 election altogether and drawing yet more international condemnation on Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev.

But this is, surely, an opportunity missed.

Would it not have made more sense to monitor the election as best as possible with limited resources. That way the West can improve its understand of what is going on in Azerbaijan and maintain closer contact with ordinary Azerbaijanis.

There will be other Western vote monitoring teams at the election but without the size and experience of the OSCE team, the West is severely limited and this is a crying shame.

By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Mobile operator TeliaSonera wants to sell C.Asia & S.Caucasus assets

SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TeliaSonera, the Swedish telecoms company, wants to sell its stakes in mobile phone companies across the Central Asia and South Caucasus region after a series of high-profile corruption and bribery allegations dragged down its operations.

The Stockholm-based company owns stakes in Azercell, Geocell, Ucell, Kcell and Tcell and analysts said that any telecoms company looking to pick up a bargain may be able to buy its assets cheaply.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Tajikistan says ex-minister killed

SEPT. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s interior ministry said security forces had killed the fugitive former deputy defence minister Gen. Abduhalim Mirzo Nazarzoda after a manhunt spanning nearly a fortnight. The authorities in Tajikistan have accused Nazarzoda of masterminding two attacks on police stations in Dushanbe and a nearby town on Sept. 4 that killed two dozen people.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Kazmunaigas profit to drop

SEPT. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — If oil prices remain steady at roughly $50/barrel, Kazakhstan’s state oil and gas company, Kazmunaigas will post a profit of 75b tenge ($279m) in 2015, Sauat Mynbayev, the company chairman, told the Interfax news agency. In 2014, the company posted a profit of nearly 200b tenge ($743m at the current rate). Mr Mynbayev said the government’s decision to let the tenge float free against the dollar has helped contain losses.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Iran-Uzbekistan trade to increase

SEPT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Iranian ambassador in Tashkent, Ali Mardani Fard, told news agency RIA-Novosti it wanted to increase by three or four times its trade volumes with Uzbekistan. The statement, while vague on detail, underlines Iran’s potential impact on trade in the region with its re-emergence into the global economy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)