OCT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – London-based Amnesty International said it had present a petition with 200,000 signatures calling for the release of dozens of so-called prisoners of conscience in Uzbekistan. Human rights activists say Uzbekistan has one of the worst records in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iranian leader Hassan Rouhani will visit Azerbaijan later this year or the start of 2015, media reported, another sign that relations between the two neighbours are improving. Relations between Azerbaijan and Iran have improved since Mr Rouhani came to power.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan and its Canadian mining partners once again clashed over ownership of the Kumtor gold mine in the mountains on the east of the country.
Kumtor is the main economic engine of Kyrgyzstan, generating around 10% of its GDP. The problem is Kyrgyzstan wants to own more of the mine which is mainly owned by Totonto-listed Centerra Gold.
Now, Kyrgyzstan president Almazbek Atambayev has threatened to force Centerra Gold to delist from the Toronto stock exchange after a court in Canada suspended its shares.
Kyrgyzstan owns a third of the company but Stans Energy, a Canadian company, has taken out a court injunction preventing Kyrgyzstan from trading its stake. Stans Energy says it is looking for payment from the Kyrgyz government after losing its licence to develop the Kutessay II rare earth mine.
The row between Kyrgyzstan and its foreign investors has been rumbling along for years. It shows no sign of slowing.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s Council of Elders, a sort of perfunctory rubber-stamping chamber of deputies which confers some sort of plurality on President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s decisions, declared 2015 at the Year of Neutrality.
The declaration itself is fairly standard but it is important as a reminder that Turkmenistan follows a strictly neutral policy.
This means that while other countries in former Soviet Central Asia are becoming increasingly involved in the Russia-led Customs Union — Kazakhstan is already a member, Kyrgyzstan is on the brink of signing up and Tajikistan is eager — Turkmenistan won’t be joining them.
It also, according to the doctrine, will prevent Turkmenistan from taking sides over potential disputes over ownership of the Caspian Sea and its riches. This is important as tension between the Caspian Sea littoral states has been rising over the past few years.
And then there is also the small matter of the Taliban to consider. They have been increasing their activity around the borders of Central Asia recently, pressuring
Turkmenistan, even, into strengthening is border security.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – With the rouble under increased pressure it has become likely, analysts have said, that the Kazakh government will devalue its currency for the second time this year.
Halyk Bank placed the tenge on a negative watch. The report, no longer available on the website of Halyk’s Financial Department, said the tenge would be around 210/$1 by the end of the year compared to 183/$1 currently. That’s a drop of around 10%.
“In the last three days conditions in Tenge-denominated money markets deteriorated sharply,” Halyk Bank wrote.
“Such changes usually happen before devaluations: demonetization, declining demand for Tenge- denominated assets, the rising cost of holding Tenge mirrored by the rising costs of borrowing, all illustrating a loss of confidence and the deepening of the currency crisis.”
Sabit Khakimzhanov, head of research at Halyk Bank and author of the report, attributed the weakening of the tenge to rising interest rates, rouble trouble, and oil prices below $95 per barrel.
The note will have irritated the Kazakh Central Bank which has been denying that it is planning a second devaluation of its currency. Khakimzhanov said that, unusually, an unnamed party had been buying $200m worth of tenge every day. This, analysts suspected, was the Central Bank trying to shore up its currency.
And, rather mysteriously, a few days after it was put up on its website, the currency note disappeared. Analysts at Halyk Bank told the Conway Bulletin that it was a management decision to take down its report.
Earlier this year, the government devalued the tenge overnight by 20%.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan will have cleared all the hurdles to their eventual accession into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) by the end of the year, media quoted deputy PM Bakytzhan Sagintayev as saying. This is important as Kazakhstan has been negotiating entry to the WTO since the 1990s.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan is deeply concerned about the impact that Russia’s slowing economy will have on its own economic prospects, the deputy economy minister Jamoliddin Nuraliev told the FT in an interview in his office in Dushanbe.
As reported previously in the Bulletin, Tajikistan’s economy is already showing warning signs linked to an impending recession in Russia. Sanctions, imposed by the West because of Russia’s alleged involvement in arming rebels in Ukraine, have started to strangle the Russian economy and those closely linked to it. This includes Tajikistan which is reliant on Russian imports and remittances from Tajiks working in Russia to prop up its economy.
“We are very much concerned about things happening in the Russian economy. We hope it will find a way to stabilise over the next year,” Mr Nuraliev said.
Earlier this month, the Tajik Central Bank raised interest rates to its highest level in two years to battle creeping inflation.
As a substitute for Russia investment Mr Nuraliev said that Tajikistan was counting on large infrastructure projects paid for by China which is looking to increase its influence in the region.
The concern with large Chinese-funded infrastructure projects is that the cash fails to trickle down fully to ordinary Tajiks. Instead, the ringmasters cream off decent proportion of the cash.
Remittances is a more effective way of pushing much needed cash lower down the chain.
Whether China’s large projects materialise or not, Tajikistan is due a rocky period, economically.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov once again said he wanted work to begin on building a gas pipeline running across Afghanistan to Pakistan and India by 2015, media reported. The so-called TAPI pipeline is a major project designed to feed gas to India and Pakistan and give economic security to Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted to pass a law that bans so-called gay propaganda, seemingly playing to Russia which has passed a similar law already and against the United States which called the new legislation an attack on democracy. Kyrgyzstan is increasingly leaning towards Russia in world affairs.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan said it wants to increase its client base for gas supplies, media reported. Turkmenistan’s president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said he had instructed officials to seek out more clients. Turkmenistan has transformed itself from recluse to major energy hub over the past decade.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
