JULY 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – French president Francois Hollande will visit Kazakhstan in the second half of 2014, the Kazakh government said. France has major investments in Kazakhstan and cooperation is growing between the two countries. There is also talk of setting up direct flights to Astana from Paris.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – As announced last month, Kazakhstan dropped visa requirements from 10 countries for people staying less than 15 days. The move is a trial but could be expanded if successful. The countries are the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, the UAE, Malaysia, the Netherlands, S.Korea, and Japan.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s oil output has continued to fall in 2014 despite attempts by BP, the country’s biggest foreign investor, to stem the decline. Reuters quoted a source in the Azerbaijani statistics department as saying that output was down 2.8% in the first six months of the year.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Uzbekistan has annulled a takeover of cement producer Akhangarancement by Russia’s Eurocement in 2006, paving the way for the state to renationalise it. The ruling is a blow for foreign businesses in Uzbekistan and underlines their suspicion of the Uzbek government.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s national energy company Barqi Tojik has blamed another massive state-run concern, the aluminium smelter TALCO, for part of its growing $300m debt.
Over a third of Barqi Tojik’s debts are owed to a pair of hydroelectric power facilities, which TALCO officially co-owns with Russia and Iran. Other debts are unpaid taxes to the state, salary arrears, and unpaid loans.
In an interview with Asia-Plus, a Barqi Tojik official said TALCO owed the company $50 million in unpaid energy bills. TALCO, which as reported is itself suffering from a major slump in demand for its products, has denied the allegations.
Barqi Tojik and TALCO are two of Tajikistan’s most significant state-owned companies and both appear to be in trouble.
Barqi Tojik’s debts have grown as public sector clients like TALCO (which alone consumes at least a sixth of national energy production) and other major industrial facilities renege on payments. TALCO reportedly haemorrhaged $40m last year and laid off a fifth of its workforce. The company has suffered from low prices for aluminium and alleged corruption within the political elite. Tajikistan’s economy looks increasing fragile.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In rural Azerbaijan religious violence has increased because of extremism in Syria and Iraq, eurasianet.org reported. It said that in a village a group of Shi’a Muslims shaved the beard of a Sunni man. The next day Sunni Muslims attacked Shi’a group.
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(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)
JULY 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Pressure has been growing on Tajikistan to release Alexander Sodiqov, the Tajik researcher linked to the Universities of Toronto and Exeter who was arrested and charged with spying last month. Mr Sodiqov was detained in the restive region of Gorno-Badakhshan, southeast Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)
JULY 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Afghan security forces killed 14 Taliban fighters in a gun battle along the Afghanistan-Turkmenistan border, media reported. Although the battle didn’t involve Turkmen forces, it acts as a reminder the Taliban operates on the edge of its border. Turkmenistan has blamed several attacks on its border posts on the Taliban.
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(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)
JULY 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s government confirmed that it had lowered its economic growth predictions to 4% from 5.2% because of sanctions imposed on Russia, its most important trading partner, since it annexed Crimea from Ukraine earlier this year. Most countries in the former Soviet Union have downgraded growth estimates because of sanctions.
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(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)
JULY 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A new report released by the Kyrgyz government’s main think tank, the National Institute of Strategic Studies (NISS), said that joining the Customs Union (CU) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EaEU) may trigger short term economic and social discomfort.
The report is the first serious analysis of the costs and benefits of membership carried out by the government itself. It will make for troubling reading for President Almazbek Atambayev who is still trying to sell the idea of membership of the CU/EaEU to the general public.
Membership of the CU will probably trigger inflation which may lead to political unrest and possibly even a rise in Islamic radicalism, the report said. The Macroeconomic situation may subsequently improve, the report added, without making predictions as to how long that might take.
The report also stressed several benefits of the CU, including duty-free oil imports from Russia — a benefit Kyrgyzstan already enjoys — and security via the Collective Security Treaty Organization, of which Kyrgyzstan is already a member.
On Kyrgyzstan’s frail democracy, the report was also incisive. Parliamentarianism would be better developed outside the EaEU than inside it, while norms of governance and nationalist sentiment in Russia could hamper Kyrgyzstan’s political development, the report said.
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(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)
