JULY 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The number of Chinese migrants working in Kazakhstan doubled this year, according to the Kazakh ministry of labour. More than 12,000 Chinese labourers work in Kazakhstan, a third of the total foreign workforce. The increase shows how important Kazakhstan has become for China.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Highlighting the recent economic downturn across the region, Georgia’s parliament passed a new budget for 2015 that cut government spending and reduced projected GDP growth of the country to 2% from 5%.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Central Bank said inflation in Tajikistan for the first half of 2015 stood at 2.6%. In the same period in 2014, inflation measured 4.5%. Tajikistan’s economy is faltering under a drop in remittances from Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A blast at a gold mine around 90km southeast of Tashkent has killed 25 people, local media reported. The blast occurred on July 13 at the village of Kochbulak. Reports said the blast was linked to a ownership dispute.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TBILISI — Overall money transfers to Georgia in the first half of 2015 declined by 22.7% to $538m, media reported quoting the sta- tistics agency, a heavy dent in Georgia’s overall income.
Remittances from Russia, which is suffering from a downturn in its economy, dropped by over 40% to $204m and from Greece, which is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, by 19% to $83m.
Last year, the data showed, remittances accounted for nearly 9% of Georgia’s overall GDP, a figure which highlights their importance to the country.
Georgia’s lari currency has also lost around 25% of its value since November 2014, putting more pressure on the economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Ufa, Russia, Uzbek leader Islam Karimov spoke unusually warmly about relations with Russia.
Mr Karimov veers from near- hostility towards Russia to extreme warmth.
Russian television showed Russian President Vladimir Putin greeting Mr Karimov.
“You haven’t been here on a state visit for a long time,” he said.
Mr Karimov shook his hand and replied: “Whatever disputes we may have, nobody can make Russia and Uzbekistan quarrel as we have common interests.”
Mr Karimov’s last state visit to Russia was in April 2013. Most Central Asia and South Caucasus leaders, other than those from Georgia and Turkmenistan, are semi-regular visitors to Moscow.
The Uzbek head of state’s manoeuvres are understandable.
Uzbekistan may be improving its relations with the West, especially with regards to allowing NATO countries to ship their military kit out of Afghanistan, but Russia is still the regional superpower and Mr Karimov needs its help economically as well as to bolster security along its porous southern border where he says the Taliban are massing.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
Kazakhstan’s Central Bank chief Kairat Kelimbetov extended the bandwidth that the tenge could trade against the US dollar to 182-198 from 182-188, effectively giving it room to devalue by over 5%.
Hours after Mr Kelimbetov’s statement, exchange bureaus in Kazakhstan had already upped the price of $1 to over 188 tenge, breaking the psychological 187 value it had been pegged around for so long.
A drop in the value of the Russian rouble and the price of oil has pressured the tenge. The Kazakh Central Bank has stood firm, though, and defended the value of its currency while neighbours have devalued.
Still, Mr Kelimbetov said external pressures had triggered the bandwidth extension and that the move was designed to shift the tenge towards a full free-float over the next 12 months.
“This corridor allows the currency to fluctuate independently of the negative scenarios that may take shape outside Kazakhstan,” he said.
Mr Kelimbetov, though, said he didn’t see the tenge dropping below 192 against the dollar in the next 6 months.
The government has said that it wants its monetary policy to target inflation rather than a tenge-US dollar rate.
This bandwidth extension follows on from a gentle recalibration of the tenge. The Central Bank has allowed it to lose a couple of percentage points in value against the US dollar this year. In February 2014, the Kazakh Central Bank devalued overnight by 20%.
JULY 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s Central Bank cut its key interest rate by 50 basis points to 3% to give its non-oil sector a boost.
Like other countries in the region, Azerbaijan has been trying to cope with an economic downturn triggered by a fall in Russia’s economy and a drop in the price of oil.
The Central Bank said Azerbaijan’s economy had stabilised since it devalued its manat currency by a third in February.
“The Azerbaijani economy remains resilient amid recent processes in the global economy and in the region continuing its stable growth,” the Azerbaijani Central Bank said in a statement.
“The monetary policy can be further eased given the acceptable level of inflation and dynamics of money supply.”
The cut in interest rates, though, is likely to put more pressure on the manat currency. This was momentarily relieved by the devaluation. Since then, data from the Central Bank has shown it has continued to spend heavily propping up its currency, although there was a rebound over the past few months which may have prompted the interest rate cut. Azerbaijan’s foreign currency reserves now measure $8.5b compared to 13.7b at the end of 2014.
Azerbaijan’s economy is skewed towards oil and gas.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TALCO, the aluminium smelter in Tajikistan, exported 3.6% more aluminium in the first half of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014, the statistics agency said. TALCO is one of the biggest aluminium smelters in the world and generates around 70% of Tajikistan’s foreign currency earnings.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s GDP grew 1.7% in the first half of this year, the statistics agency said. This is within estimates but is less than half the growth during the same period in 2014. Low oil prices and a drop in the value of the rouble have hit Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
