OCT. 31 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – France’s President Francois Hollande will travel to Astana on Dec. 5 for a two day visit, the French embassy in Kazakhstan said. France and Kazakhstan have developed close economic ties. Mr Hollande’s predecessor Nikolas Sarkozy visited Astana a handful of times.
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(News report from Issue No. 207, published on Nov. 5 2014)
OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s GDP has fallen by 0.8% this year compared to 2014, the World Bank said, more evidence that economies closely-linked to Russia are suffering from sanctions imposed by the West.
The World Bank said that a fall in remittances from Tajik workers in Russia had translated into weaker domestic demand for goods.
“A Russian slowdown affects Tajikistan largely through the remittances channel,” the World Bank wrote in its report.
“A slackening in remittances weighs heavily on household demand, notably demand for services and housing construction.”
This is particularly worrying for Western countries which are counting on a strong and stable Tajikistan to act as a bulwark against any movement by the Taliban northwards into Central Asia from Afghanistan.
Most of the former Soviet Union has been hit by Western sanctions imposed on Russia because of its alleged intervention in the Ukraine civil war but the World Bank also said that a generally weak global demand for industrial goods was impacting Tajikistan too.
It said that industrial growth had fallen to 3% from 7% a year earlier because of low global industrial demand and falling cotton and aluminium prices.
These sentiments mirror the Tajik Central Bank. Both also predicted that inflation would gradually become an increased concern in Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev has said inflation will increase in Kyrgyzstan when it joins the Customs Union, which is morphing into the Eurasian Economic Union next year. He also said the country no alternative to joining the Russia-led economic bloc, highlighting the Kremlin’s tightened grip over Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia has denied that it has given permission for a commercial flight between Yerevan and Simferopol, the capital of Crimea.
As reported by the Bulletin last week, Grozny Avia, a Chechen airline, has floated plans to fly between the two cities twice a week. If the flight route did materialise it would be the first air route into Crimea, other than from Russia, since Russian forces annexed the Ukrainian province earlier this year.
News of the planned flight angered the Ukrainian government. It has also been suggested that Armenia had been coaxed into allowing the flight to appease Russia. Armenia needs Russian economic support to keep its finances in order and Russian military support to balance the threat posed by Azerbaijan which wants to re-take the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia-back rebels.
But Armenia’s civil aviation authority has said that an earlier statement from Crimea’s transport minister about the planned flight was simply wrong.
“The Head Department of Civil Aviation did not receive, and therefore has not examine, a bid for operation of direct flights from Yerevan to Simferopol,” media quoted spokesman Ruben Grdzelyan as saying.
This is not a categorical no, then. It does suggest that this issue may have further to run.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan will probably issue another sovereign or quasi- sovereign bond next year following its $2.5b Eurobond issue in October, the head of the Kazakh Central Bank Kairat Kelimbetov told Reuters in an interview. Mr Kelimbetov said another debt issue would likely be made as a sukuk, a bond linked to Islamic banking principles.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A report by the Open Society Foundations, funded by US billionaire George Soros, on Uzbekistan’s cotton industry concluded that most of the profits from the sector goes to hidden funds that only a handful of top officials can access. Western companies are boycotting Uzbek cotton because of its alleged use of child labour.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Houses prices in Kazakhstan rose by nearly 10% last year, media quoted the IMF as saying, one of the biggest rises in the world. The spike was far higher in Almaty. Economists have warned of a bubble in Kazakhstan’s housing market.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s finance minister Bakhyt Sultanov announced cuts of $1.5b to the national budget over the next two years, a sign of tough economic times driven by sanctions on Russia and lower oil prices. The main cuts will focus on procurement and debt servicing.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – With the price of a barrel of oil falling to a four-year low, the Kazakh government has said it will review its national budget. Kazakhstan’s economy is propped up mainly by oil revenues. With oil revenues falling and with sanctions hitting Russia, Kazakhstan’s disposable income has shrunk.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s ministry of sport said that if it was to win the right to host the Winter Olympic Games in 2022 it would expect advertisers and investors to fund around 66% of the costs. Kazakhstan is desperate to host the Winter Olympics but observers have said that it might not be able to afford it.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
