Tag Archives: Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan to cut funds for overseas study

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan is phasing out a programme that funded overseas study for undergraduates in order to save money during an increasing vicious economic downturn.

Mikhail Jabbarov, Azerbaijan’s minister of education, said funding for bachelor level programmes has dried up.

“The ministry is developing a new format of the program, which envisages education at foreign higher educational institutions only for PhD and Master’s Degrees,” Mr Jabbarov told media.

The government’s stated objective is to attract more foreign professors to Azerbaijan to allow undergraduates to receive high-level tuition without having to study abroad.

What the government cannot openly say is that the programme has become unsustainable because of a sharp drop in oil prices that has dragged down its economy.

The ministry of education’s overseas undergraduate programme is one of two channels that Azerbaijani youth can use to access scholarships to study abroad.

SOFAZ, the country’s oil fund, had also established an eight-year programme in 2007 to fund education abroad. But that programme is now being wound up and is unlikely to be extended.

In the first quarter of 2016, SOFAZ said it spent 5m manat ($3.3m) paying fees for Azerbaijanis studying abroad.

Analysts have said that if both programmes were cut, Azerbaijan would, effectively, be isolating itself from the West.

The government has already cut several domestic social projects, including updating broadband internet across the country and investments in care homes, roads and railways, to cut costs.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Editorial: Prisoners in Azerbaijan

APRIL 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – International pressure against human rights abuses sometimes works. In a surprise move, Azerbaijan’s authorities allowed Leyla and Arif Yunus, two recently-freed human rights activists, to leave the country. Worsening health had been the authorities’ reason to free the Yunuses at the end of last year. But they still faced a suspended sentence and were banned from leaving the country.

Now, effectively, Azerbaijan’s government is giving them a chance to seek both medical treatment and asylum in Europe.

This has to be cheered. It showed that EU and US pressure can work. It also gave Azerbaijan a way out of a difficult stand-off over its clampdown on opposition activists and human rights workers.

Last month, Azerbaijan also released a handful of activists in an amnesty.

But there is still some way to go. Other journalists and opposition activists are still in Azerbaijani prisons.

The public pressure on Azerbaijan and the behind-the-scenes dialogue that no doubt helped the Yunuses to the Netherlands must be maintained.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Ban Ki-moon cancels visit to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia

APRIL 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon cancelled a visit to the South Caucasus this week due to an unforeseen emergency, his press service told media. The UN had planned a visit to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in April for Mr Ban. Analysts hoped his tour would have appeased the warring sides around Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory that both Armenia and Azerbaijan claim as their own. Instead Mr Ban planned to travel to Yemen and Syria.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

International Bank of Azerbaijan and Standard to merge

APRIL 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Bank Standard and the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) started negotiations to merge their assets, in what could be a major shift in Azerbaijan’s banking sector. IBA is, by far, the largest bank in the country. It controls 60% of all domestic loans. Azerbaijan’s ministry of finance owns 55% in IBA. Bank Standard, owned by AB Standard Group, is said to be close to Azerbaijan’s political elite.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

War and smiles in Azerbaijani-Armenian disputed territory

SHUSHI/Azerbaijan, APRIL 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The high mountains, steep cliffs and green landscapes are a pleasure to the eye, but Nagorno Karabakh feels empty, quiet and sad.

From the Armenian border to Shushi, one of the disputed region’s larger towns, several ghost-like settlements hug the road.

Shushi itself is strewn with rubble but not from fighting that sparked earlier this month, the worst since a UN brokered ceasefire was imposed in 1994. This rubble was from fighting in the early 1990s when Christian Armenian-backed fighters took the town from Muslim Azerbaijani soldiers. The abandoned mosques lie testament to that.

Saro Saryan, an ethnic Armenian originally from Baku, brought out a bottle of vodka and insisted that it must be finished before morning was out. He fled Baku in 1990.

His son sat beside him, silent, eyes glued to his iPad. He was back from fighting against Azerbaijani forces.

Saryan, now flush with vodka, chipped in. “I’m extremely proud of my son for volunteering to fight on the front lines. Karabakh is a proud country and we’ll fight till the end for our historical right,” he said.

In contrast to Shushi’s emptiness, the streets of Stepanakert, the Armenian capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, are clean and filled with people. Military convoys rumble past, children ride bikes, a lady walks her dog.

The locals may flash a friendly smile but the stress of war is never far away. “Many families left Karabakh once the conflict resumed, it’s sad. But what can they do?” said 30-year-old Zara.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Business comment: Doha dissappoints

APRIL 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Energy ministers in Baku and Astana were frustrated last week after a meeting of oil producers in Doha failed to agree to freeze oil production at January 2016 levels. Advocates of capping production had said that this would help oil prices rebound.

But Azerbaijani and Kazakh objectives at the meeting may have been slightly different to those of Saudi Arabia or Russia.

Certainly, they wanted a deal to push up oil prices but they also wanted to use any agreement as a fig leaf to cover up their sinking production levels.

Azerbaijani and Kazakh production and export volumes are too low to influence oil prices directly. They are price takers, not setters. The problem is that their ageing oilfields are simply uneconomical at $40 or even $60/barrel and this has forced producers out of the market.

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan will continue to “freeze” production, because there’s nothing else they can do. Their production, and consequently their exports, are bound to fall again this year, according to all major forecasting agencies, from OPEC to the IEA and the EIA.

A recent survey of oil experts at PRIX said, for the first time since it started polling, that global oil exports are bound to fall in Q2. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan will be part of this trend, the quarterly report said.

Had the Doha meeting succeeded, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan could have hidden falling production figures behind an international agreement.

Now they have to face further oil price volatility, the main outcome of the failed Doha talks, and without a smokescreen to defend their lower output figures.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Azerbaijan’s Bank needs more capital, says Fitch

APRIL 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ratings agency Fitch said the International Bank of Azerbaijan needs to increase its proposed 500m ($328m) manat capital injection to repair its solvency problems. IBA, which is Azerbaijan’s largest bank, wrote off around 3b manat ($2b) of non-performing loans, but has another 3b manat or more of troubled assets, according to Fitch. A sharp depreciation of the manat last December hit the value of assets in Azerbaijan’s banking sector.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Russia continues selling weapons to Armenia and Azerbaijan

APRIL 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia said that it will continue to sell weapons to both Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russian PM Dmitri Medvedev told Russian media, despite the worst outbreak in violence earlier this month between the two neighbours since 1994. Mr Medvedev said that if Russia stopped selling weapons to Armenia and Azerbaijan, they would simply buy them from another country which would, potentially, by more dangerous.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Azerbaijan’s SOFAZ invests abroad

APRIL 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – SOFAZ, Azerbaijan’s state oil fund, said it wants to diversify its investment portfolio and increase its investment in equities. According to the latest investment policy, it plans to raise to 15% from 10% the share of the Fund it invests in equities. According to the Fund’s report, it allocated just 6.5% of its portfolio into equity investments in 2014. Equities are considered riskier than fixed-income securities, real estate and gold, SOFAZ’s preferred investment destinations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Hard rock slows gold production in Azerbaijan’s mine

APRIL 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s top gold miner Anglo Asian Mining posted a 17.6% fall in production in Q1 2016, compared to the same period in 2015, mostly due to technical difficulties.

Anglo Asian is listed on London’s Alternative Stock Market (AIM). News of the production slowdown knocked its share price by 6.2%, pushing it to a seven-day low.

Reza Vaziri, Anglo Asian’s CEO, said: “The harder rock that has been encountered together with its lower grade has further lowered production compared to the previous quarter. To combat this harder rock, we have contracted for a second SAG mill to be installed in the agitation leach plant and we expect the SAG mill to be operational in Q3 2016.”

Sales also fell. In Q1 2016, the company sold 12,058 ounces of gold at $1,184/ounce. In Q1 2015, it sold 17,206 ounces at $1,214/ounce.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)