MAY 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev travelled to China for his first visit to the country as Uzbekistan’s leader. During the three-day visit, Mr Mirziyoyev is expected to sign various headline deals with his Chinese counterparts. China has become perhaps the biggest driver of economic growth in Central Asia over the past few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Pledges to cut output and to support prices pushed up oil to $50.85/barrel, its highest in May, giving support to both the Kazakh tenge and the Azerbaijani manat. They both inched up slightly, with the tenge finishing on 315.54/$1, up nearly 1%, and the Azerbaijani manat hitting 1.6775/$1, also up around 1%.
As the graph shows, the tenge has risen by 8.6% since the start of November, giving the economy and the Central Bank much-needed breathing space. Gains since mid- February, though, have been limited and a deeper look at tenge shows that it has under performed against oil prices. The price of Brent oil has increased by 13.4% since the start of November, far outstripping tenge.
Of the other currencies, the long Victory Day holiday slowed trade and there was little movement, up or down, except with the Uzbek som. This is a tightly managed currency and the authorities have been slowing cutting its value to reflect a general slowdown in the economy. Once again, over the course of the last week, the som’s value has fallen by around 0.8%.
As for equities, it was also a fairly steady week with Centerra Gold gaining the most, up 7.5%. Caspian Sunrise stock is inelastic and changes tend to be wild.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — British fraud investigators have forced ENRC, now called Eurasian Resources Group, to hand over documents that it has said are important evidence into allegations of corruption and fraud that it is investigating surrounding the company that was previously listed on the London Stock Exchange. Prosecutors have been looking into alleged corruption at ENRC since 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan has established an ombudsman of sorts to promote business interests, media reported. Under a decree signed by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the new body will promote dialogue between businesses and various state bodies. Businesses have been urging Mr Mirziyoyev, president since September last year, to improve the business environment.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iranian officials said they were ready to sue Turkmenistan in an international arbitration court for cutting gas supplies this winter, ramping up tension between the neighbours.
The announcement highlights just how far relations between Iran and Turkmenistan have splintered since Turkmen officials said last year that Iran hadn’t paid a $1.8b bill for gas delivered in 2007 and 2008.
In a statement quoted by Iranian media, Hamid Reza Araqi, managing director of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), said Turkmenistan had failed its commitments.
“The price of gas, the damage they inflicted on Iran in winter by cutting off gas supplies, and the quality of gas delivered to Iran are three cases claimed by Iran,” he was quoted as saying. “Iran’s documents are ready to be submitted to the International Court of Arbitration.”
To some extent the row shows the strain an economic downturn has put countries and their leaders under. Before Turkmen officials accused Iran of reneging on bills, relations had been improving every month. As well as gas supplies Turkmen electricity was being imported, political links had been strengthened and there was talk of Iran providing Turkmenistan with access to the Persian Gulf through a swap system.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has offered to sell uranium to Brazil to cover a shortfall in Brazilian production, media reported quoting Kazakh deputy foreign minister Yerzhan Ashikbayev. Reports said that he had met with Brazilian officials who were looking for help to feed its two nuclear power stations with uranium. Brazil has abundant supplies of unmined uranium but miners have struggled to win environmental licenses to mine it, forcing the power stations to import most of the uranium.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
TBILISI, MAY 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — While success and failure in Georgia’s acrimonious political arena are fragile, support for the Georgian Dream’s Universal Healthcare system has been consistently high.
Introduced in 2013, its advocates say that it has increased people’s access to healthcare and also given private companies such as Georgian Healthcare Group a huge boost.
In a survey by the International Republican Institute, 19% of respondents said that reforming the health service was the best thing that the government has done since winning power in 2012. The next most popular answer was achieving visa-free access to the EU, identified as important by 4% of respondents.
What the Georgian Dream government did was simple, said George Gotsadze, director of the Curatio International Foundation. He explained that it created a state- funded healthcare system that replaced an insurance-based system that only half the population had opted into.
“Prior to 2013, with public financing healthcare coverage was provided for 1.6m people out of 3.7m. The Universal Health Programme pretty much-expanded coverage to all the population of Georgia,” he said.
The government has also, effectively, cut out the middlemen insurers. It picks up the bills and pays the hospitals, run by private companies such as Georgian Healthcare Group, directly. In 2018, the Georgian government is expected to spend 3.1b lari on healthcare, up from 2.1b lari in 2015.
Most Georgians have seen a jump in the quality of their healthcare.
Teona, a Tbilisi resident gave birth to a premature child when she was six months pregnant. She said that she had incurred almost no expenses.
“My daughter was in an incubator for a long time. All I had to do was to bring diapers [nappies],” she said.
And this strategy has also spurred a major boom for business. Since 2013, Georgian Healthcare Group has expanded rapidly and now operates 35 hospitals. Spun off by Bank of Georgia, it listed on the London Stock Exchange in November 2015. Its shares have risen from 170p to 370p.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — China will buy 200 ambulances for Armenia, Armenian foreign minister Eduard Nalbandyan was quoted by media as saying. China has steadily increased its influence over the South Caucasus, currying favour through economic and business deals. As well as buying ambulances and other equipment for social projects and the emergency services, China has set up a series of language and cultural centres across the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In its updated assessment of the Azerbaijani economy, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said that it expected its economy to shrink by 0.5% this year, the second consecutive year that Azerbaijan’s economy will contract, but that it will grow by 2% in 2018. Azerbaijan’s economy has been hit hard by a sharp slump in oil prices since mid-2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
DEC. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Georgian talk show host, Giorgi Gasviani, accused police of beating him up and threatening him after a minor car accident in snowy conditions in Borjomi, northern Georgia. Media quoted Mr Gasviani as saying that he was attacked by a drunk off-duty policeman after his car slid on an icy road. Georgia’s police force is often held up as the model transformation from a corrupt institution to a far more open and respected unit. The interior ministry said it has launched an investigation.
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(News report from Issue No. 310, published on Dec. 23 2016)
