Category Archives: Uncategorised

Kazakhstan tries to balance all sides over Ukraine

SEPT. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan is having to play a precarious balancing game to keep competing interests in and around Ukraine happy, Kazakh foreign minister Erlan Idrissov said in an interview with Reuters in New York.

Mr Idrissov was in the United States to meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry to reaffirm the two countries’ friendly ties.

The complexity of Kazakhstan’s position is not just down to its geographically position but also because of its membership of the Kremlin-led Customs Union.

“We as a matter of principle support an independent, sovereign, forward-looking, advancing politically and economically Ukraine. That is the core of our policy towards Ukraine,” Mr Idrissov said in the interview.

“We take no sides.”

The United States and the EU have imposed economic sanctions on Russia which has slowed its economy and triggered a knock-on effect on neighbouring Central Asia. Russian economic growth powers Central Asian economies.

Mr Idrissov underlined the impact of sanctions on Kazakhstan. “The crisis prevents the entire area from focusing on economic development and delivering well-being to the population,” he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Energy crisis looming in Kyrgyzstan

SEPT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Energy experts handed out more predictions of energy shortages this coming winter in Kyrgyzstan. One expert, Nikolai Kratsov, told the KNews website electricity could be turned off for up to 15 hours a day. Hydropower generates Kyrgyzstan’s power. Reports say reservoir levels are low.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Iran eyes Tajikistan’s water

SEPT. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – There is only one natural resource Tajikistan is indisputably rich in. Water.

With the fresh water reservoirs close to Tehran running low, Iran is trying to work out how to import Tajikistan’s spare water, opening up a tantalising export prospect for Central Asia’s poorest country.

Iranian officials have previously touted the idea of pumping water from Tajikistan to Iran.

According to RFE/RL’s Tajik service, as of 2004 Tehran was prepared to invest $3b in an ambitious pipeline to send water from Tajikistan’s Lake Sarez to Khorasan province in Iran.

The pipeline, which could transit a billion cubic metres of water annually, would also have to travel at least 500 km across Afghanistan.

It’s expensive but when Iranian officials visited Dushanbe they again brought up the prospect, Bloomberg quoted Iran’s Mehr news agency as reporting.

With Iran’s liquidity hampered by UN sanctions, it is no surprise that now that the talk is of a water for oil swap. Tajikistan depends mostly on Russia for its petrol supplies.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Georgia and Russia resume flights

SEPT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Regular air flights between Russia and Georgia have resumed for the first time since they were suspended in August 2008 when the two neighbours fought a brief war, media reported. The resumption of direct flights is a significant milestone in improving relations between Georgia and Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Russia handed ex-BTA to Kazakhstan

SEPT. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia handed over Erlan Kosaev, a former BTA Bank official wanted in connection with fraud, to Kazakhstan for prosecution. Mr Kosaev was a colleague of Mukhtar Ablyazov, who is currently in a French jail. Kazakhstan wants to extradite Mr Ablyazov although rights groups have said that he wouldn’t face a fair trial.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

WB offers Kyrgyzstan $25m

SEPT. 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The World Bank has offered to lend Kyrgyzstan $25m to help improve energy infrastructure ahead of the winter, media reported. Kyrgyzstan is facing a potential energy crisis this winter with water levels in its dams at a low. Energy shortages trigger frustration which bubbles over into public anger.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Kazakh city improves for finance

SEPT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Almaty sees itself as the financial centre of Central Asia and, increasingly, as a hub for businesses and companies wanting to straddle Europe and Asia.

And it appears as if it is earning plaudits.
In the latest ranking by London-based consultancy Z/Yen of the world’s most important financial centres, Almaty ranked

43 out of 84 cities, a jump from 58 in February. Only Istanbul, in Eastern and Central Europe, ranks higher in 42nd position.

Professor Michael Mainelli, chairman, Z/Yen Group told the Conway Bulletin that instability in Europe, mainly triggered by the civil war in Ukraine, had diminished cities’ standings there to Almaty’s benefit.

“Political turmoil throughout the Middle East and Asia, particularly in oil-rich dictatorships, seems to put Almaty on a more even footing with its competitors,” he said.

The index is ranked on several different areas. These are business environment; financial sector development; infrastructure; human capital; reputation and general factors.

Since the first Global Financial Centres Index was launched in 2007, Almaty has steadily improved its ranking. Good news, indeed, for Kazakhstan’s financial sector.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Uzbekistan announces more utility price rises

SEPT. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s government announced new electricity power price rises, the second of the year, from Oct. 1.

Like other Central Asian economies, sanctions on Russia have hit Uzbekistan too. Uzbek infrastructure is also groaning under increased demand, triggering energy shortages. Petrol shortages have also been reported for the past year.

Now Uzneftgaz, the state energy company, has said that prices for gas will rise by 10%. Water and heating prices will also rise by 7%.

These increases follow a 9% rise in April and analysts will be monitoring closely people’s reaction.

Rising utility prices can trigger widespread social unrest and with Uzbekistan in a state of flux it is vulnerable. The apparent arrest of Uzbek president Islam Karimov’s eldest daughter, Gulnara Karimova, on various economic charges has unsettled politics and petrol shortages coupled with utility price increases have hit its economy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Historian of Great Game dies

LONDON/United Kingdom, SEPT. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A natural adventurer, story-teller and Central Asia historian, the British author Peter Hopkirk died aged on Aug. 22 aged 83.

Hopkirk was a foreign correspondent for various British newspaper who developed a niche specialisation in later life writing about the so-called Great Gamers of Central Asia.

The first of these books was the seminal ‘Foreign devils on the Silk Road: The search for the lost cities and treasures of Chinese Central Asia’, published in 1980.

Widely acclaimed this book was followed by five more on Central Asia, including Hopkirk’s most well-known book ‘The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia’, published in 1990.

These books first brought to the public’s attention the high stakes game played out in the late 19th century between mainly British and Russian agents in Central Asia. This important part of imperial history had been largely overlooked by modern historians until Hopkirk’s books.

His stories were made more remarkable because most were written and researched while Central Asia was still part of the Soviet Union. He once described how he had to play games of his own with various minders to grab interviews or delve into an archive for information.

It’s hard to over-state Hopkirk’s contribution to our understanding of Central Asia and its importance in the world, as the publisher noted in a brief blurb to his fifth book ‘On Secret service east of Constitnople’ published in 1994.

“Pieced together from the secret intelligence reports of the day and the long-forgotten memoirs of the participants, Peter Hopkirk’s latest narrative is an enthralling sequel to his best-selling ‘The Great Game’ and three earlier works’,” it said.

“It is also highly topical in view of recent events in the region where the Great Game has never really ceased.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Halyk Bank to buy HSBC Kazakhstan

SEPT. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Central Bank officially decreed that Halyk Bank, one of the country’s biggest banks, could buy HSBC’s Kazakh subsidiary. Halyk Bank agreed to buy HSBC’s Kazakh operation earlier this year for around $175m. HSBC is streamlining its business, cutting the less profitable operations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)