Category Archives: Uncategorised

Honda says it is pulling out of Kazakhstan

ALMATY, SEPT. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Japanese car-maker Honda has decided to quit the Kazakh and the Russian markets until economic conditions improve, media reported.

Honda’s final shipment of cars to Kazakhstan was at the start of 2015 and to Russia in Dec. 2014.

The fall in value of currencies and the collapse in the car market had forced Honda to leave.

Weak local currencies have pushed up prices of imported cars.

A Honda spokesperson denied that the company was quitting the former Soviet Union altogether.

“We think the market has potential in the future so we’re not pulling out,” she told the FT. “We can respond flexibly since we don’t have a plant in Russia.”

Honda car sales in Kazakhstan fell by around 50% in 2015. In Russia, they shrank by 78%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)

Kazakhstan bans communist party

SEPT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Almaty ordered the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, until a few years ago one of the only genuine opposition parties in the country, to disband permanently. Media reported that the Kazakh ministry of justice said the party had misrepre- sented its activities. In 2011, a few months before a parliamentary election in 2012, a court suspended the Communist Party.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)

Refugees from Syria resettle in Armenia

SEPT. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Around 15,000 ethnic Armenians have fled their homes in Syria and resettled in Armenia, the BBC quoted the UN as saying. More than 100,000 Armenians had lived in Syria, mainly around Aleppo before a civil war broke out in 2011.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)

Tajik hunt for fugitive minister

SEPT. 11 2015, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s security forces have been scouring rough countryside in a valley 150km from the capital Dushanbe for the country’s most wanted man, General Abduhalim Nazarzoda, a former deputy defence minister.

The authorities accuse Gen. Nazarzoda of masterminding a series of early morning attacks in Dushanbe and a police station at Vahdat, a town 10km away, on Sept. 4 that killed at least nine policemen and 13 gunmen.

In Dushanbe, the authorities blocked access to social media sites and ordered more soldiers to patrol along the streets.

Hoji Said, a local Dushanbe resident, summed up the tense atmosphere in the capital.

“I have not seen so many policemen in Dushanbe,” he said.

Still, despite the extra security, a World Cup football qualifier match between Tajikistan and Australia went ahead. Australia won 3-0.

Gen. Nazarzoda was one of the leaders of the Tajik United Opposition, a coalition that fought against the government in a civil war in the mid-1990s. He fled the country but returned after a UN- brokered peace deal ensured handed him a role in the government.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)

Rox Petroleum’s assets in Kazakhstan downgrade

SEPT. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — London-listed Roxi Petroleum said it had downgraded the value of its assets in Kazakhstan by 28% after last month’s devaluation of the tenge. Roxi’s main activities are focused in the Mangistau region, west Kazakhstan. Since the announcement, Roxi’s share price has fallen by 12%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)

Borajet flies to Georgian city

SEPT. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a boost for Georgia’s tourist sector, privately-owned Turkish airline Borajet opened a new air route from Istanbul to the Georgian Black Sea resort town of Batumi. Borajet will fly to Batumi three times a week from Istanbul’s second airport. Turkish Airways already flies from Istanbul’s main airport to Batumi.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)

Kazakh government ditches petrol price controls

SEPT. 4 2015, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government scrapped petrol price controls, another major admission that the market rather than the state is better placed to direct its economy.

Government officials blamed the volatility in foreign exchange markets for scrapping price controls on petrol which immediately jumped in price by around 40%.

Pressured by low oil prices, rising inflation and the depressed value of the Russian rouble, the Kazakh Central Bank released the tenge from its US dollar peg last month. It fell 23% in one day and is now trading at an all-time low of around 262/$1 which made petrol excessively cheap.

Deputy PM Bakhytzhan Sagintayev was handed the task of explaining the new policy to journalists.

“Having studied all possible options and discussed the issue with market players, we decided there should be a flexible pricing model given the ongoing volatility at the FX market,” he said. “The Government has decided to stop regulating prices for AI-92 and AI-93 petrol.”

In Almaty, Kazakhstan largest city, the effect was immediate. Queues snaked out of petrol stations as drivers rushed to fill their tanks.

Guldariya Iskakova, an accountant, summed up the feeling of people in Almaty about the petrol price rises. “It is awful. We are now seriously thinking to use public bus,” she said. “Our expenses have increased several times. The prices for petrol increased by 20 tenge in just one day.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)

Georgian TV channel cuts talk shows

AUG. 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The owners of the Imedi TV channel in Georgia cancelled two popular talk shows, triggering accusations that they had bowed to pressure from the ruling Georgian Dream coalition. Opponents of Georgian Dream say that it is intimidating criticalmedia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)

Construction starts at new Uzbek tyre plant

AUG. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek officials held a ceremony to mark the beginning of construction of a new tyre plant in the Angren special industrial zone, 90km outside of Tashkent. The total cost of the plant will be $230m. Uzkhimprom, the state-owned chemical industry holding, Uzavtoprom, the Uzbek car industry holding, and the two metallurgic complexes at Navoi and Almalyk will build the plant, the Trend News Agency reports.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)

Gazprom to invest in Kyrgyzstan

AUG. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, will invest $700m in Kyrgyzstan’s gas infrastructure network, Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev told media. Gazprom owns Kyrgyzstan’s gas network and has been promising investment, although it has yet to deliver on these promises.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)