SEPT. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) agreed to issue $95m in loans and grants to Kyrgyzstan for the reconstruction of the North-South Corridor, a vital road link. The Eurasian Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the Saudi Fund for Development and China’s Export-Import Bank are also participating in the reconstruction of the road.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Georgia in the first half of 2016 grew by 10% compared to the same period last year. In Q2, FDI declined by 3.8% to $445m. Azerbaijan, Britain and the Czech Republic were the three largest investors in Georgia in Q2. FDI in the transport and communications sector made up more than a third of the total inflow.
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(News report from Issue No. 295, published on Sept. 9 2016)
SEPT. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved a $240m loan to help Kazakhstan improve a 185-km highway around its northern Caspian Sea shore to Russia. The road is important to link Kazakhstan to Russia and the South Caucasus via land, giving it further access to European markets. The ADB said the road improvements will open up new trade and investment opportunities.
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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)
JULY 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Maintenance work at the Bukhara-Tashkent-Bishkek-Almaty gas pipeline will result in gas cutoffs in several Kyrgyz towns, the press service of Gazprom Kyrgyzstan said. The pipeline is part of a Soviet-designed system pumping Uzbek gas to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and the repairs and gas cutoffs show just how antiquated the pipeline network has become.
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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)
JULY 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After lengthy negotiations, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) decided to loan $750m to Azerbaijan, to co-fund improvements to the country’s power distribution sector.
The aim is to connect peripheral regions outside Baku, which suffer from chronic system losses, to the main grid and reduce inefficiency and waste. But with electricity generation falling, Azerbaijan needs to put more attention and effort towards its upstream power sector, rather than the downstream.
It’s true that Azerbaijan is self- sufficient and produces all the electricity it consumes domestically, as the ADB also said.
The worry is rather on the shrinking margin of extra production allocated to exports.
In 2015 electricity exports halved compared to the previous year according to Azerbaijan’s customs agency. Azerbaijan exported 276.8m kWh of electricity in 2015 against 588.3m kWh in 2014.
And the problems continued this year.
In the first half of 2016, electricity generation at Azerlight, the country’s main producer, fell by 6%, compared to the same period last year, to 10.8b kWh. Consumption, on the other hand, continued to grow exponentially at annual rates of 5-9% since 2010.
For quite some time Azerbaijan has said it wants to export more electricity to its neighbours Turkey and Iran, a power export target that seems in vogue across the region currently.
Now this option seems to be falling off the priority list as the government has become increasingly worried that Azerbaijan could soon need external help to fulfil its domestic demand.
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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)
JULY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said it will lend $750m to Azerbaijan to co-fund improvements to the country’s outdated regional power distribution systems.
The project, worth around $1b, aims to refurbish the distribution network and the efficiency of Azerishiq (Azerlight), the state-owned power distribution company.
Azerbaijan’s government will invest the remaining $250m. The ADB said that it will send its $750m loan in three tranches of $250m.
“This ADB program will help address the bottleneck in electricity supply and provide round-the-clock and reliable electricity to households and entities in secondary cities and rural areas in Azerbaijan,” Sean O’Sullivan, director general in ADB’s Central Asia Department, said.
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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)
JUNE 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The World Bank approved a $978m loan to finance the construction of a road link across Kazakhstan, which will complete the transit corridor between Astana and the west of the country. The project will cost a total of $1b and will be partly funded by the government. The World Bank is also funding part of the Kazakh section of the Western Europe – Western China highway.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
FEB. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said it is giving Kazavtozhol a $103m loan to widen an 80km stretch of road in southern Kazakhstan on the main south-north highway. The EBRD has been an important driver of infrastructure projects in former Soviet Central Asia since the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
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(News report from Issue No. 268, published on Feb. 19 2016)
DEC. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The World Bank has approved funding of $140m to upgrade a motorway running east-west across Georgia, media reported. Georgia’s infrastructure needs upgrading and the east-west motorway has been identified as an important project which will improve transport routes for 2.2m people.
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(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)
SEPT. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Veolia, the French utilities company, is looking to extend its control of Armenia’s water and sewage systems, Gor Grigoryan, CEO of Yerevan Jur which is already managed by a Veolia subsidiary, said. Armenia is re-organising its water and sewage companies. Next year, Yerevan Jur will merge with the Armenian Water and Sewage Company. There are three other similar companies in Armenia.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
