JULY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Donald Tusk, head of the European Council, completed his tour of the South Caucasus in Baku where he held talks with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev. Mr Tusk’s visit comes at a time of increasingly strained relations between Azerbaijan and the West.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Almaty-based Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) will loan $300m to Armenia to weather tough economic conditions, media reported quoting Russia’s deputy economy minister Sergei Storchak. The ADB was set up by Russia and Kazakhstan. It supports members of the Eurasian Economic Union.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a report entitled “‘That’s When I Realized I Was Nobody’: A Climate of Fear for LGBT People in Kazakhstan”, Human Rights Watch said that homophobia in Kazakhstan was rife. Almaty is bidding to host the Winter Olympics in 2022. The HRW report was released on the eve of the IOC decision on who to award the Games to.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – French telecoms company Orange is considering selling its Armenian subsidiary to Ucom, an Armenian fibre optic cable. Orange has been operating in Armenia since 2009 and has 650,000 subscribers.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — For Kyrgyzstan, gold is its most important commodity, the Kumtor gold mine in the east of the country is its most important mine and Switzerland is its most important export market.
Last week, the government released data on trade turnover, which showed a marginal downturn, due mostly to the regional crisis triggered by the downfall of the rouble. A strong dollar and low oil prices have damaged the economic outlook for the whole region, especially for countries, like Kyrgyzstan, which rely heavily on foreign remittances. It was not a surprise to see trade shrink by 12% in January-May 2015, as compared to the same period last year.
An accurate data analysis, however, also told of another underlying story. Out of the eight major markets for Kyrgyz exports, the only two to grow were Switzerland (2.2 times larger than in 2014) and the British Virgin Islands (almost 4 times larger).
Centerra Gold, owners of the Kumtor gold mine, had a much better start in 2015 than it had in 2014 and trade with Switzerland, the main importer of Kyrgyz gold, was automatically boosted. Switzerland now accounts for 48% of Kyrgyz exports.
Kyrgyzstan is heavily betting on Switzerland to keep its cash flow steady. The one warning sign on the horizon is that gold has dipped to a 5-year low.
By Paolo Sorbello, Deputy Editor, The Conway Bulletin
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A core group of activists opposed to electricity price rises have called for a series of rallies in Yerevan between July 27 -31 ahead of the Aug. 1 start date of the increases. Momentum behind the rallies protesting against the price rises has fizzled out.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Net profit at KCell, Kazakhstan’s largest mobile operator, dropped by 23.6% in Jan-June compared to the same period in 2014 because of aggressive price competition, the company said.
A few days later, on July 21, Kazakhstan’s state monopolies committee also ordered KCell, owned by Sweden and Finland based Telia-Sonera, to return around 1.5b tenge ($800m) to its customers for overcharging, more evidence that mobile charges in Kazakhstan are falling sharply.
KCell CEO Arti Ots said: “Further intensification of competition, with notably aggressive pricing, has impacted our results for the second quarter of 2015.”
KCell’s competitors Tele2, also based in Sweden, also blamed a price war in Kazakhstan for lower-than-hoped for profits. Mats Granryd, the company’s CEO, said that prices in Kazakhstan are falling sharply.
“Kazakhstan is turning into a real bloodbath when it comes to pricing,” he told Reuters in an interview.
Mobile companies operating in Kazakhstan are competing to lower prices, in an effort to grab market share.
And the conse- quences of these pricing policies are filtering through. In earnings reports, both KCell and Tele2 said they have not been profitable in Kazakhstan in 2015.
Specifically, Kcell said that its sales in H1 2015 were down by 6.6% on the same period in 2014. It also said that service revenue dropped by 12.3%.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan Airlines will reduce the cost of is tickets in-line with a direct order from President Ilham Aliyev, local media quoted the company as saying in a press release. The statement showed just how much control Mr Aliyev has over Azerbaijan’s various state-linked companies.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Lifting of international sanctions against Iran will give Kazakhstan’s steelmaking industry, and the ArcelorMittal plant at Temirtau in particular, a boost, Asset Isekeshev, Kazakh minister for industrial development, said.
ArcelorMittal Temirtau, near Karaganda, is one of the most important factories in Kazakhstan outside the oil and gas sector but it has struggled recently because of a drop in demand for steel from Iran.
“The lifting of sanctions against Iran could be a big plus for ArcelorMittal. This is a big market for us and this would allow us to stabilise operations,” Mr Isekeshev said at a press conference.
According to officials from ArcelorMittal Temirtau, Iran makes up around a third of its export market. Over the past few years, ArcelorMittal has tried to cut costs at the plant. It has laid-off thousands of workers and imposed salary cuts.
A new railway transport route from Kazakhstan, across Turkmenistan into Iran should also help ArcelorMittal exports.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan increased its electricity exports by 9.4% in the first half of 2015, compared to the same period last year, according to the ministry of energy. Afghanistan receives the majority of Tajik electricity exports. Electricity exports are increasingly important to Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
