MAY 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s GDP in the first four months of 2015 was about 7% higher than for the same period in 2014, Chinara Turdu- bayeva, head of the state’s statistics committee, told media.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – As expected, parliament approved a law that will extend the time that citizens of most Western countries can stay in Georgia without a visa to 360 days from 90 days. Visa-free regulations were tightened in the summer.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Shokir Fayzullayev, head of Uzbekneftegaz, the Uzbek oil and gas company, said Uzbekistan intends to start an $18.65b investment project that will re-orientate its strategy for gas towards refining it rather than exporting it. Mr Fayzullayev said Uzbekistan wanted to add more value to its gas production.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In Vienna, Austrian president Heinz Fischer told Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov that Austria wanted to buy Turkmen gas. Europe is trying to persuade Turkmenistan to send its gas west to Europe. Turkmenistan is looking for more clients for its gas.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s government scrubbed the Armenian flag from a photo posted on its website of a parade in Moscow to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany by the Soviet Union, media reported. Azerbaijan and Armenia are still officially at war over Nagorno-Karabakh.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) holds its 24th annual meeting and business forum in Tbilisi May 14-15, placing Georgia firmly at the centre of the region’s attention.
Georgia is the first country in the Caucasus to host the annual EBRD meeting. Uzbekistan hosted the event in 2003. The Bank is a major player in Georgia, and has invested a total of $3b over the last 22 years.
This meeting is strategically important for Georgia to demonstrate its economic development, especially now, when the country is mired in a currency crisis. The lari has lost around 32% of its value since November.
Deputy minister of finance Davit Lezhava said the meeting was a perfect opportunity to spread information about Georgia to the outside world.
“I hope that the meeting will result in more investment, greater integration with the democratic world and in more political support,” Mr Lezhava told the Bulletin.
Over $7.2m was spent in preparing the EBRD annual meeting by the private sponsors and the government, media reported.
Mr Lezhava said that he didn’t know how much came from the state’s budget.
“But whatever the governmentcontribution was, it is not a waste of money because we will have great benefits from this event,” he said.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan exported 6.5% more gas in the first quarter of this year than it did in the same period of 2014, media reported quoting government figures. It also produced around 5% more gas.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan has finished building a pipeline that crosses the country from east to west, Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said on a trip to Vienna.
The pipeline connects Shatlyk, near the giant gas field of Galkynysh, to Belek, a few kilometres south of Turkmenbashi, on the Caspian Sea coast.
The east-west flow of the pipeline shows that Turkmenistan is poised, eager even, to send gas to Europe. Mr Berdymukhamedov hinted, strongly, at a similar reason for the pipeline.
“The construction of this pipeline, which is capable in the long term, if necessary, to transport large volumes of Turkmen energy resources in the right direction, will provide additional guarantees for their reliable and stable export,” he said.
Europe wants to import gas from Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan, wants to broaden its client base away from China.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek cinemas are showing a slickly made feature-length film which appears designed to project the government’s version of events in the town of Andijan 10 years ago when soldiers killed hundreds of people.
The 2-1/2 hour long film, called Sotqin and made by the government backed UzFilm studios, tells the story of two disenchanted brothers from a provincial town.
With the help of a foreign spy and agitators linked to Western non-governmental organisations they become increasingly religious and are persuaded to launch an attack on government buildings with a group of Islamic extremists.
Human rights groups have accused the Uzbek government of using the film, released in March, as a propaganda tool.
“It [the Uzbek government] wants to provide its own narrative — a quite strident, assertive narrative that Andijan for us is closed and any violence that was committed — or any harm that was done — was done by outsiders, not by us,” Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia programme director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, told the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Uzbekistan has always disputed the widely-accepted Western version of the Andijan killings of May 13 2005. It has said that 187 people died in Anijan and that most were armed Islamic extremists. Human rights groups said that the death toll was far higher and that those killed were unarmed civilians.
The killings in Andijan triggered an international outcry. Uzbekistan was seen as a pariah state and was shunned by the West. This changed, though, over the past few years because NATO has needed Uzbekistan to help it withdraw its military kit from Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kremlin-led Eurasian Eco- nomic Union officially signed up Kyrgyzstan as its fifth member after Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia. Before Kyrgyzstan actually joins, though, the Kyrgyz parliament has to ratify the deal. Kyrgyzstan is worried about the impact on its trade with China.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
