MARCH 17 2015 (The Bulletin) – Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev flew to Kars in Turkey to launch construction of the $10b Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) which will pump gas from the Caspian to Europe. Also present were Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan and Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 17 2015 (The Bulletin) – In a statement on its global oil and gas output, Russia’s Lukoil said although there were pressures on its downstream production sites, its projects in Uzbekistan were on target. Lukoil is a major investor in Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 17 2015 (The Bulletin) – Air Armenia, Armenia’s only major passenger airline, has delayed re-starting services, media quoted head of marketing, Sirakan Hambardzumyan, as saying. Air Armenia’s suspended flights in October last year because of a cash flow problem. It had been due to resume flights in March.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 11 2015 (The Bulletin) – The Kyrgyz som has lost nearly 5% of its value against the US dollar this year, media quoted the head of the Central Bank, Tolkunbek Abdygulov, as saying. Mr Abdygulov also said that he wanted to impose strict capital requirements for Kyrgyzstan’s banks
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 17 2015 (The Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s economy will probably grow by 1.5% in 2015 despite a downturn in regional conditions, Reuters quoted EBRD economist Dmitry Gvindadze as saying. He said Azerbaijan’s oil fund, worth $50b, had created a buffer that meant Azerbaijan could weather the economic storm.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 16 2015 (The Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon appointed his 27-year-old son Rustam to head up the Agency for State Financial Control, a government entity in charge of fighting corruption.
This is not the first public post Mr Rakhmon’s eldest son has held. Aside from local administration and nation-wide assignments he heads the country’s Football Federation and for a year was chairman of the Customs Service, a powerful government agency.
Mr Rakhmon is all-powerful having won a parliamentary election earlier this month which eliminated any pretence of a functioning opposition in the country.
Opposition groups have accused him of corruption and blatant nepotism. Other high-ranking officials have been accused of smuggling and drug running.
International observers have become increasingly exasperated with Tajikistan and Mr Rakhmon’s style of rule.
Mr Rakhmon barely acknowledges these accusations but promoting his son to head a senior government agency will hardly improve Tajikistan’s standing in the eyes of foreign investors and governments.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 16 2015 (The Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s GDP in January was nearly 17% lower than for the same month in 2015, the Central Bank said in its monthly report on the state of the economy.
In January, Azerbaijan generated receipts worth 3.63b manat ($3.46b) compared to 4.36b manat in January 2014. This means that Azerbaijan is slipping towards a recession.
The Central Bank slashed the value of the manat by 33% last month and most media in Azerbaijan, which is generally pliant and pro-government, spun the drop as a rise in real GDP because of the devaluation.
Many economists disagreed, though. Samir Aliyev, an economist at the Center for Assistance to Economic Initiatives in Baku, said this heavy drop in GDP is more evidence that the combined impact of the drop in global oil prices and also the downturn in Russia’s economy have hit Central Asia and the South Caucasus hard.
“We witnessed such a big drop only in 2008 and 2009 during the global economic crisis, when oil prices slipped down,” he said. “However, to call it a recession we should have numbers for at least three months.”
The trickle-down effect of the collapse in oil prices from the summer of 2014 — prices fell by around 50% — has only just begun to seriously dent Azerbaijan’s economy. January was the first month that GDP dropped.
Data from the Central Bank also showed that Azerbaijan’s non-oil economy — which international economists said needs to grow — increased by 5%.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 14 2015 (The Bulletin) – Former Georgian PM Bidzina Ivanishvili said that he will launch a TV show, media reported. Although he will not host the show, he will be a semi-regular guest on it. His opponents have said that Mr Ivanishvili is trying to influence people through his TV appearances.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 18 2015 (The Bulletin) – Ordinary Kazakhs have lost faith in the Central Bank and are expecting a tenge devaluation, media quoted Halyk Bank CEO, Umut Shayakhmetova as saying. She said the proportion of savings held in foreign currency had now risen to 70%. The Central Bank has promised not to devalue the tenge.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 13 2015 (The Bulletin) – Uzbekistan has agreed to buy two high-speed trains from the Spanish company Talgo, media reported. The Uzbek government is spending millions on updating its train network.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
