Category Archives: Uncategorised

Turkmenistan criticises Russia

>>Criticism comes after Russia cuts Turkmen gas imports>>

FEB. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan has criticised Russia as an unreliable gas partner, hinting that it was moving away from its traditional energy alliance with Moscow and was instead looking for new clients and markets.

Ties between Turkmenistan and Russia have been increasingly strained and, perhaps, the Kremlin’s shadow boxing with the West in eastern Ukraine persuaded it to issue the harshly worded statement and speed up its search for new clients.

“Gazprom and its affiliates periodically violate agreements at interstate, intergovernmental and interdepartmental level, leading to the view that unfortunately the major energy company is an unstable partner,” the AFP news agency reported quoting an article on the website of Turkmenistan’s oil and gas ministry.

Earlier this year, Gazprom said that it was cutting imports of gas from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan by up to two-thirds.

Like other countries in the region, Turkmenistan has been trying to deal with the fallout from the decline in the value of the rouble and also the fall in energy prices. President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has ordered his energy executives to search for more clients.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Azerbaijan oil output rises

FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Oil output in Azerbaijan rose for the first time in a year, Reuters quoted an Azerbaijani official as saying. The official, who declined to be named, said the increase was due to a rise in production at the ACG fields operated by BP.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Armenia opposition say they are harrassed

FEB. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Gagik Tsarikian, head of the opposition Prosperous Armenia Party, has accused the government of harassing his staff and sacking police tasked with defending his property, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Mr Tsarikian said President Serzh Sargsyan ordered the tax police to close his operations.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Azerbaijan to ditch US dollar peg

>>Dollar being dropped to counter oil price slip>>

FEB. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan plans to scrap its currency peg to the dollar to ease the impact of falling oil prices, Azerbaijani Central Bank chief, Elman Rustamov, said in an interview with the Financial Times.

The comments appeared to trigger a reaction on the street. Bulletin correspondents reported long queues forming outside exchange booths in Baku the day after the interview was published. People were anticipating another currency devaluation and were trying to exchange their Azerbaijani manat into US dollars.

Like other countries in the region, Azerbaijan has been trying to deal with the fallout from Russia’s tumbling rouble and the decline in oil prices.

One of the major side-effects of the economic turmoil has been an increase in inflation, as Mr Rustamov pointed out in the interview.

“It is critical to make some kind of corrections to fiscal and monetary policy,” he said. “We consider that we should transit to a more flexible exchange rate regime and gradually we will transit to an inflation-targeting regime.”

He didn’t say when the US dollar peg would be dropped but he did say that the new basket would hold more Euros, reflecting more accurately Azerbaijan’s trade make-up. Economists said they expected a gradual decline in the value of the manat of around 1% every month.

And people in Baku are becoming increasingly concerned about economic instability.

Mahammad Qasimli, 57, a school teacher said he was concerned hyperinflation from the mid-1990s may return.
“Every time when there is economic turmoil, the poor suffer the most,” he said.”
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Made in Kazakhstan label

FEB. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government has launched a new initiative to promote domestic industries which will include a clothing label marked “Made in Kazakhstan”, officials said. Earlier President Nursultan Nazarbayev had said more people should buy Kazakh goods.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Kyrgyzstan stops more IS recruitment

FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s security services have uncovered 30 more attempts by the radical group IS to recruit young disaffected Kyrgyz men for their army in Syria, the US-backed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported quoting the government. The authorities also said an imam at a large mosque had been arrested for supporting IS.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

US mission to the S.Caucasus

FEB. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland is due to travel to Yerevan and Baku over the next few days to discuss their relations with Washington and how to reduce rising tension along the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Ms Nuland’s trip is part of a wider South Caucasus mission.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Tajikistan imprisons extremist recruiters

FEB. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Tajikistan has sentenced 13 members of a group linked to the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) to jail for 9-12 years for trying to recruit young men to travel to Syria to fight for the extremist organisation IS, media reported.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Kazakhstan to go for early elections

>>Early vote is a tried and tested strategy>>

FEB. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev looks set to bring forward a presidential election by a year, a move designed to impose stability during a turbulent economic period.

The Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan asked parliament to bring forward a presidential election from 2016 to this spring.

“It is crucial to strengthen the economy and ensure the continuity of the current policy by holding an early election,” the assembly, a constitutional body headed by Mr Nazarbayev, said in a statement.

Since then the country’s biggest political party Nur Otan has voiced its support for an early election.

The dire economic situation has been a constant headache for the Kazakh leadership in the past few months, especially after the plunge in oil prices and the collapse of the Russian rouble.

The Kazakh elite view extending Mr Nazarbayev’s term in office by another five years as a way of imposing stability. Kazakhstan, also, has form with bringing elections forward. It brought an election in 2011 forward. Mr Nazarbayev won with 96% of the votes.

Experts were waiting for an announcement of this sort.

Kazakhstan’s political watchers had often ended conversations with Bulletin correspondents with: “We are waiting for an early election, to guarantee medium-term stability.”

It appears that their predictions have been borne out. It still remains to be seen, though, whether these elections will calm an increasingly turbulent political and economic environment.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

TAPI update

FEB. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The countries developing the planned 1,800km pipeline to run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India failed to announce a company to lead its construction as had been expected at a meeting in Islamabad. Media had said that France’s Total would be announced as the TAPI consortium leader.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)