Tag Archives: business

BP to stay at Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz

NOV. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan said it wants BP to remain as the operator in Shah Deniz, the country’s largest gas field. A senior official at SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, told Reuters that SOCAR and BP will continue cooperation for Phase 3 of the project.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Plane crash kills Armenians

NOV. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Five Armenian crew members, including the pilot, were killed in plane crash in south Sudan. The Antonov-12 cargo plane, operated by Armenia’s Ala International, was carrying 40 people.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Akishev was groomed for Kazakh Central Bank top job

NOV. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Daniyar Akishev’s promotion to head the Kazakh Central Bank may have taken observers by surprise but to those who know the 39-year-old, it is a job he has been groomed for.

Mr Akishev is a veteran of the Central Bank, where he worked in various positions from 1996 to 2014 before moving to the Akorda as economic adviser to President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

In 2007 Mr Akishev was rumoured to be in pole-position for taking on the role of new chief of the financial regulator.

Instead has was named deputy head of the Central Bank, a position he held for seven years, under three different bosses.

In particular, Central Bank insiders said he achieved professional maturity under Grigori Marchenko, a respected liberal economist, who often clashed with Mr Nazarbayev on economic policies.

There have been wobbles, though, in Mr Akishev’s rise to the top. In December 2008, ominously, he said the economic situation was ideal for Kazakhstan.

“The Central Bank has no problems with the exchange rate of the tenge, quite the contrary,” he told RIA Novosti in an interview.

Two months later, the Bank devalued the tenge by 19%.

Media quoted some local analysts as saying that Mr Akishev lacks independence because of his young age and his lack of political authority. But Mr Akishev is the same age as Mr Marchenko was when he was named head of the Central Bank for the first time in 1999 and is five years older than Oraz Dzhandosov was, when he became Central Bank chief in 1996.

Mr Akishev’s predecessor, Kairat Kelimbetov, who held the job for two years during which the tenge lost half its value, had a different profile and no background at the Central Bank.

Mr Akishev might have accepted possibly the toughest job in Kazakhstan, but he is also one of the few people in the country with the experience and background to take it on.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Tele2 and Kazakhstan’s Altel team up to establish new mobile company

NOV. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swedish telecoms company Tele2 said it will create a joint venture with Kazakhstan’s Altel to grab market share and monopolise access to 4G technology, a bold move in a region where corruption scandals have scarred rival Nordic companies.

Tele2 Kazakhstan is the third-largest operator in the country, after TeliaSonera’s Kcell and VimpelCom’s Beeline (Norwegian Telenor owns a 33% stake in VimpelCom). Altel is a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s state-owned Kazakhtelecom and the only operator with a 4G licence in the country.

Tele2’s CEO, Alison Kirkby, said that the deal will give the company a major lift and position it to attract more customers.

“This transaction will enable our customers to gain access to Altel’s 4G network and to benefit from its accelerated rollout across Kazakhstan,” Ms Kirkby said of the joint venture.

In the past two months, TeliaSonera and Telenor have said they want to sell off their assets in Central Asia and the South Caucasus after US and Dutch authorities started investigations into corruption allegations in Uzbekistan. Tele2 have, possibly, spotted an opportunity and decided to push to form a joint venture with Altel.

But it will be tough, as price battles have pushed down profit margins in the telecoms sector in the past two years. In July, former Tele2 CEO Mats Granryd said: “Kazakhstan is turning into a real bloodbath when it comes to pricing.”

When the joint venture is formalised in 2016, Tele2 will own a 49% stake and will also be the company’s operator. Pietari Kivikko, Tele2 Kazakhstan’s chairman, will serve as the top manager in the new joint venture.

The depreciation of the tenge in August, after the Central Bank cut its US dollar peg, has hit profits at telecoms companies which earn tenge but accrue costs in foreign currencies.

This year, Tele2 Kazakhstan has fared better than the competition. In Q3, it increased its revenue by 34% compared to last year and in the first nine months of 2015, it increased its customer base by 33% to over 4m users.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Petronas shows interest in pumping Azerbaijani gas

NOV. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Malaysia’s energy company Petronas said it is interested in buying stakes in the TANAP and TAP pipelines pumping gas from Azerbaijan to Europe. In April, Petronas bought Statoil’s 15.5% stake inAzerbaijan’s main gas field, Shah Deniz.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Tajik-Japanese joint venture to build factory

OCT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Avvalin, a joint-venture between Japan’s Cokey Systems and the Tajik government, wants to build a factory to produce liquorice root-based medicines. Tajikistan produces liquorice in the south-west of the country. The Tajik government owns 51% of Avvalin. Cokey owns 49%.

ENDS