JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Both state-owned Uzbekistan Airways and Tajikistan’s Somon Air have downgraded their links to Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, citing security concerns and dwindling consumer interest.
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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)
JULY 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tethys Petroleum’s share price has fallen steadily in the past four months, as the Olisol share buy-in becomes a reality. This week it closed at 1.63p/share in London on Thursday, down 6.9% on the previous week.
The Guernsey-based oil and gas company operates chiefly in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. In May it reached a final financing agreement with Kazakhstan-based Olisol, which is poised to buy a 42% stake in the company once the deal becomes concrete.
Last week, the company announced the appointment of a new Chief Commercial Officer, Kazakhstan-born Alexander Skripka, who is also a director and shareholder of Olisol.
Mr Skripka had previously worked for state-owned Kaztransgas, the main gas distributor in the country. The link with a state-owned company is perhaps a sign of just how embedded Olisol is in the elite circles of Kazakhstan’s oil and gas sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)
ALMATY, JULY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kcell, Kazakhstan’s largest mobile operator, said Q2 revenues were 15.3% lower than last year because of weak economic conditions and aggressive competition which have driven down prices.
Kcell’s Q2 revenues of 36.4b tenge ($107.7m) represented a slight improvement over the previous quarter, when it posted 35.6b tenge ($107), its worst quarter since an IPO in 2012. Importantly, however, Kcell said that its subscriber base is holding up through an economic downturn.
“In the second quarter we started to see some stabilisation in market prices and subscriber numbers,” the company’s CEO Arti Ots said in a statement.
Increased competition and the depreciation of the tenge currency against the US dollar over the past year have knocked revenues for mobile operators in Kazakhstan.
In April 2016, revenues for all mobile companies in Kazakhstan were down by 21% to 68b tenge ($204m) compared to the same period last year, according to government data.
Sweden’s Telia Company owns a 62% stake in Kcell. It has said that it wants to sell this stake because of reputational damage caused by a corruption probe into bribes it paid to enter the Uzbek market.
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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)
JULY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iran increased gas supplies to Armenia to make up for a drop in Armenian imports from Russia, imposed by repairs to a pipeline crossing Georgia.
The deal highlights the rivalry between Moscow and Tehran for gas supply contracts to Armenia and, more widely, the South Caucasus.
For one month from July 10, repair work will halt gas flows along the Russia-Georgia-Armenia pipeline, Kazak-Saguramo.
Analysts have said the maintenance work on the pipeline from Russia has given Iran a chance to position itself as a reliable alternative supplier of gas.
Armenia imported 818m cubic metres of gas in the first half of 2016 from Russia, a drop of 7.7% from 2015. This is around five times more than Iran currently exports to Armenia.
Levon Yolyan, Armenia’s minister of energy, was due to visit Iran on July 25, to negotiate the gas supplies.
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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)
JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Iranian government said that Azerbaijan’s authorities had decided to release assets belonging to Naftiran Intertrade Company (NICO) and the Central Bank of Iran, as part of the relaxation of international sanctions against Iran. Mohsen Pak Ayeen, Iran’s Ambassador to Baku, said that a total of $400m held at the International Bank of Azerbaijan were released by local courts.
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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)
JULY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Zaman Bank, a small bank in Kazakhstan, said it had converted into an Islamic financial institution. Kazakhstan’s Central Bank signed off on the deal. With assets of 15.7b tenge ($46.5m), Zaman has a small presence in the Kazakh banking market and only one branch, in Almaty. Zaman will now join Bank Al-Hilal the more prominent Islamic lender in the country. Islamic banking, which promotes lending with an Islamic ethos, is becoming more popular in Central Asia’s finance sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)
JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev signed a range of laws that ratify domestic and international agreements on CASA-1000, an electricity transmission project that will send power from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Loans from international lenders, including the World Bank and the Islamic Development Bank, will make up 70% of Kyrgyzstan’s total funding for the project.
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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)
JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek PM Shavkat Mirziyoyev complained to his Tajik counterpart over the signing of a $3.9b contract with Italy’s Salini Impregilo to build the Rogun dam and hydropower station on the Vakhsh river.
Uzbekistan has always opposed the project, which it has said will reduce essential water flow from the Pamir mountains to the Amu Darya river which irrigates Uzbek cotton fields.
For Tajikistan, Rogun carries symbolic value, it will be the world’s tallest dam, and is also economically important.
Mr Mirziyoyev said Tajikistan’s stance will trigger a reaction.
“The persistence with which the Government of Tajikistan seeks at all costs to continue construction of the Rogun hydroelectric power station, cannot but cause anxiety for the possible dangerous and irreparable consequences of such risky steps taken by the Tajik side,” he wrote.
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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)
JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — China’s Xinjiang Silu Changlong Investment said it will partner with Uzbekistan’s ministry of economy to establish a $28.7m food processing, packaging and logistics centre in Bukhara, in the south of the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)
JULY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A deal for Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR to lead a takeover of Greece’s gas pipeline network DESFA could collapse after the Greek government agreed a lower-than-expected gas price rise. SOCAR has been working on putting together the deal to buy up Greece’s pipeline network since 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)
