Tag Archives: economy

Azerbaijan halts currency trades

SEPT. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Banks in Azerbaijan’s capital have stopped selling foreign currency as demand soared after the Azerbaijani manat started to depreciate, triggering memories of the currency’s double devaluation last year.

The news will be disappointing to Central Banks across the Central Asia and South Caucasus region who had hoped to have moved away from the currency crises of 2014 and 2015.

According to sources in Baku, the manat traded at 1.68/$1, 5% lower than last month. They said that many Azerbaijanis now fear that another crisis is around the corner and have tried to hoard foreign currency. Bloomberg reported that 15 banks in Baku and the city’s international airport had stopped selling US dollars, a sign that demand had surpassed availability.

Azerbaijan’s economy is particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of oil prices, which have collapsed since 2014, and it is set to shrink this year for the first time since the mid-1990s.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Kazakhstan expects GDP to grow

SEPT. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s GDP will grow marginally by 0.5% in 2016 and move back to a steadier growth pattern in 2017, Kuandyk Bishimbayev, minister of economy said. Mr Bishimbayev said that Kazakhstan’s GDP will grow by 1.9% in 2017. He also said that, with the expected start-up of the Kashagan oil project, oil production will jump 13.5% to 84m tonnes/year in 2017, back to 2013 levels. This should bode well for the economy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Fire in Moscow factory kills 17 Kyrgyz migrant workers

AUG. 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A fire in a printing warehouse in northeast Moscow has killed 17 migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan, the Russian authorities said.

The fires once again raise concerns over safety standards for migrant workers from Central Asia in Russia. In January, 12 migrant workers died in a clothing factory in Moscow.

Emergency services said that the fire at the printing warehouse was started by a faulty light on the first floor. Smoke spread quickly through a lift shaft to the fourth floor where the workers were sleeping. Most of the workers died in their sleep through smoke inhalation and another died later in hospital.

Unconfirmed reports also said that the factory mainly hired women.

Russia remains a major source of employment for workers from Central Asia and the S.Caucasus although there have been accusations of substandard working conditions.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)

Kazakhstan expects delay in state asset IPO

AUG. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will wait until 2018 to start selling off state assets in what has been billed for years as the People’s IPO, Baljeet Kaur Grewal, managing director for portfolio investment at Samruk-Kazyna, the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund told Bloomberg in an interview. He said the fund wanted to wait for oil prices to pick up before selling various assets.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)

Armenia’s CBank cuts interest rates

AUG. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s Central Bank cut its key interest rate to 7.25% from 7.5% to help counter falling consumer prices, the lowest rate since 2014. Annualised deflation in Armenia measured 1.3% at the end of July, the Central Bank said, a trend that would continue.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)

Azerbaijan’s CBank raises interest rates to 9.5%

AUG. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Bank raised its key interest rate to 9.5% from 7%, its highest level since 2008, in an effort to bolster its currency.

Azerbaijan’s economy is based on oil, meaning that a fall in prices has hit its economy hard. Analysts have predicted a recession this year, the first since the 1990s.

The manat currency was devalued twice last year. It had been strengthening throughout 2016 but has lost around 10% of its value since June and is, according to Bloomberg, now one of the five worst performing currencies. The Central Bank increased its key interest rate to 5% from 3% in February.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

Remittances in Tajikistan fall, again

JULY 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s Central Bank said that the flow of remittances from abroad fell by 22% in the first half of 2016, compared to the same period last year. The Bank said that a sustained recession in Russia has slashed the value and the volume of remittances. Tajikistan is one of the world’s top remittance-dependent countries. Tajikistan and the rest of the region have been having to cope with the fall from a collapse in oil prices and a recession in Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Gas tariff rise in Kazakhstan

JULY 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh anti-monopoly agency approved a 39% increase in the top rate it can charge for pumping gas through its pipeline network to 1,769 tenge/1,000 cubic metres ($5), in a move that will impact domestic and industrial gas prices. The new tariff ceiling will come into effect on Sept. 1 and will be valid until 2020. Gas price rises are a sensitive issue. Governments across the region have been raising prices slowly, moving away from Soviet subsidies. This, though, has frustrated people and triggered anti government protests.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Poverty increases in Kazakhstan

JULY 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a new country report, the World Bank said that Kazakhstan has been unable to reduce poverty in the past few years, as the percentage of the population living off under $5/day continues to measure around 14%. In absolute numbers, poverty has increased and the number of people living under the World Bank threshold is nearing 3m. The World Bank said that the depreciation of the tenge since August 2015 and a stagnant job market have impacted living standards.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Oil output falls in Kazakhstan

JULY 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Due to sustained low oil prices, Kazakhstan’s oil production could shrink further this year, according to Asset Magauov, deputy energy minister. Mr Magauov said that a majority of the companies operating in the country reported a decline in production in 2015. The official forecast for 2016 is 75.5m tonnes, a 5% reduction compared to last year. In March, then-energy minister Vladimir Shkolnik had projected a production target of 77m tonnes for 2016.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)