Tag Archives: business

Azerbaijan’s row over weapons

MARCH 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian deputy PM Igor Rogozin flew to Baku to meet with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev for talks over a shipment of weapons which Azerbaijan is apparently refusing to pay for, media reported. It was unclear if Azerbaijan didn’t want to pay for the weapons, as a form of protest over military aid Russia has given to its enemy Armenia, or whether it couldn’t pay because of the worsening impact of the economic slowdown.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Armenian Coca Cola disagrees with state comission

MARCH 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Coca Cola Hellenic Bottling, the Armenian distributor of soft drinks, said it disagreed with the State Commission for Protection of Economic Competition which imposed a 50m dram ($102,000) fine on it for unfair competition last week. Coca Cola Hellenic said it will challenge the fine in court.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Noricum says it will start gold production in Georgia in Q3

TBILISI, MARCH 6 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) — UK-based Noricum Gold will install a second drilling rig at its Kvemo Bolnisi mine in Georgia, it said, to bring forward the start of production to the third quarter of 2016.

Noricum said in a statement it was stepping up its operations in Georgia, after it announced new discoveries last month.

“Having recently raised £1 million which is sufficient to see us through to production in Q3 2016, we intend to firstly produce gold ore from Kvemo Bolnisi where drilling is currently underway, and then at Tsitel Sopeli,” Greg Kuenzel, Noricum’s general director, said in a statement.

Mr Kuenzel also said the company had raised £1m ($1.4m) to bring in the extra equipment and speed up production.

Noricum owns a 50% stake in the Bolnisi gold and copper project, an 860 square km complex of mines in southern Georgia.

It bought the stake for £2.6m ($3.7m) from GMC Investment in July 2015. The remaining 50% belongs to Georgia’s Caucasian Mining Group, owned by Russian entrepreneur Dmitri Troitsky.

Reserves at the Bolnisi project include 980,000 tonnes of copper, 6.6m ounces of gold and 22m ounces of silver.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Pakistani military chief visits Tajikistan

MARCH 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – General Raheel Sharif, Pakistan’s military chief, made his first trip to Tajikistan, pledging his full support for defeating terrorism in the region. This is important as it shows the growing bonds between Central and South Asia. Tajikistan is part of the CASA-1000 plan to generate electricity in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan which is then exported to Pakistan, via Afghanistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Norway parliament challenges Tajikistan’s TALCO to reveal its true owner

MARCH 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A parliamentary committee in Norway opened an investigation into alleged corruption by state-owned aluminium producer Norsk Hydro in Tajikistan, the second probe in the last six months into bribery against a Norwegian government-owned company working in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

Specifically, the Norwegian parliament now wants to see Hydro’s contract with Tajikistan’s state-owned aluminium plant TALCO. It challenged the notoriously secretive TALCO, the biggest industrial asset in Tajikistan, to reveal who its true beneficial owners are. Many believe that, via a network of offshore companies, it is Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and his family.

Media quoted Jette Christensen, MP and a member of the committee, as saying: “We and the minister must find out who are the hidden owners, therefore this is an order to both Hydro and the minister. We also believe that we must see the entire contract Hydro had with TALCO Management Ltd.”

TALCO Management Ltd., the shell company for TALCO, is registered in the British Virgin Islands and is seen by many observers as a safe haven for corrupt practices.

Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv wrote an in-depth story about the Hydro-TALCO case in mid- February, an article that appears to have triggered parliament’s renewed interest deals between the two companies between 1993 and 2003.

Hydro have denied the allegations and sent a 17-page reply to parliament. “There are no indications of Hydro having acted in violation of applicable laws, internal rules or guidelines,” Dag Mejdell, Hydro’s chairman, said in the statement.

“The company has zero tolerance towards corruption.”

The Norwegian government owns a 34.3% stake in Norsk Hydro.

In November 2015, Norway’s minister of industry sacked Svein Aaser, chairman of Telenor, a telecoms company under investigation for corruption in Uzbekistan in 2007/8 linked to payments for 3G licences. The investigation is ongoing.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Oil output to rise in Kazakhstan

MARCH 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan will raise its target annual oil production in 2016 by 5% to 77m tonnes if oil prices remain at around $40/barrel, media quoted energy minister Vladimir Shkolnik as saying. This is important because a rise in both production and price would give government revenues in Kazakhstan a much-needed lift.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

AvtoVaz cuts exports to Kazakhstan

MARCH 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian carmaker AvtoVAZ has stopped exporting finished cars to Kazakhstan due to the introduction of new customs duties, Vedomosti reported quoting a source close to the company. The new taxes, introduced this year, increase the overall average price of an auto- mobile by $2,000. Instead, AvtoVAZ will expand its exports of car parts to its factories in Kazakhstan. This was confirmed to Kazakh media late on Thursday by an AvtoVAZ spokes- person.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Uzbekistan plans to invest $249m in its giant gas processing plant

MARCH 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek government wants to invest around $294m to increase production and efficiencies in its gas sector, mainly to boost the Ustyurt chemical plant.

State-owned Uzbekneftegaz co- owns the Ustyurt chemical plant with South Korea’s Lotte Chemicals. The $4.1b project was opened in October and is considered key to Uzbekistan’s future economic plans.

The Uzbek government will directly invest around $236m in the Sharkiy Berdakh gas fields near the Aral Sea to complete the new booster compressor station it is building with Ukrainian firm Sumy. The state-run Fund for Reconstruction and Development will provide an additional $58m through a loan.

Uzbekistan is in the top 15 gas producing countries in the world and sees it as the bedrock of its future economic plans. It’s a gamble, though. Uzbekistan and its partners have committed to large energy projects, with fixed up-front costs, as energy prices continue to bounce along record lows.

If it all goes to plan, the project will be completed in November 2016 and output at the gas fields will be increased by 15% to around 2b cubic metres annually. Improved infrastructure will allow Sharkiy Berdakh to supply the Ustyurt plant, located around 100km away in the remote Karakalpakstan region of western Uzbekistan.

The Ustyurt chemical complex has a processing capacity of 4.5b cubic metres per year. It has been designed to turn Uzbekistan into a gas processing hub for Central Asia and also Russia.

Uzbekistan is also looking to invest in its largest chemical complex, Navoiazot. The government issued a $393m loan last week to extend its nitrogen and ammonia facilities.

The Uzbek government has put 49% of Navoiazot, in central Uzbekistan, up for sale to foreign investors in a recent drive to privatise state assets to raise funds to ward off a worsening economic slowdown.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Kazakh court fines Karachaganak

MARCH 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Kazakh court fined the consortium operating the Karachaganak gas and condensate field in the north of the country 526b tenge ($1.5m) for environmental damage. The court said the KPO consortium emitted around 43.8 tonnes of pollutants into the atmosphere between April and July 2015. KPO consortium shareholders include BG Group, ENI, Chevron, Lukoil and state-owned Kazmunaigas.

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(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

S&P downgrades Kazakhstan’s Baiterek

FEB. 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit ratings for Baiterek Holding from BBB-/A-3 to BB+/B. S&P said “the likelihood of extraordinary government support to the consolidated Baiterek group [is] almost certain”. It said its negative outlook mirrors that of the agency’s latest assessment of Kazakh sovereign credit. Baiterek’s subsidiaries include the Development Bank of Kazakhstan and the Investment Fund of Kazakhstan.

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(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)