Tag Archives: economy

Kazakh car manufacturers report production rise

JUNE 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh carmakers doubled domestic production in May compared to April, according to the Association of the Kazakh Automobile Business, but overall sales are still lower this year.

Car production and demand are a decent weathermast for checking the health of economies. Kazakhstan, like the rest of the region, has been struggling to cope with the fallout from a decline in economic conditions, linked mainly to a fall in global oil prices.

This drop in car sales and production numbers.

Overall, car sales have slumped by around a third in Kazakhstan in the first quarter of the year compared to 2014 but there was a definite uptick in domestic production last month. Domestic manufacturers produced 2,611 new cars in May up from t 1,248 cars in April.

The car market is still suffering from slow sales in the first quarter of 2015, down 32% from the last quarter of 2014.

Car manufacturing has become increasingly important to Kazakhstan’s economy, employing hundreds of people. Most of the industry is based around Kostanai in the north of the country and Oskemen, or Ust-Kamenogorsk as it was called until recently, in the east.

In Kazakhstan, car sales hit 160,000 in 2013, up nearly 70% from 2012. There was a slight drop in 2014 and 2015 is shaping up to be an even bigger drop. This will likely be the first time that car sales have declined for two years in a row in Kazakhstan since 2008 and 2009, during the global economic crisis.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Inflation worries Georgia’s Central Bank

JUNE 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Prices manufacturers in Georgia are paying to produce their goods are rising at the fastest rate since 2011, the national statistics agency said, sparking concern that underlying inflation may also be accelerating.

Georgia’s Central Bank has said it wants to fight off the effects of regional economic turmoil and the falling value of its lari currency and keep inflation under control.

But Geostat, the Georgian statistics agency, said its Producer Price Index (PPI) rose by 0.8% in May from April, registering an increase of 9% from May 2014.

“Manufacturing prices increased 11.1% contributing 9.05 percentage points to the overall index growth,” Geostat said of the PPI growth rate figures.

“The prices mainly increased for manufacture of food products, beverages and tobacco products (16.9%), manufacture of paper and publishing (30.4%) and manufacture of basic metals and fabricated metal products (4.0%).”

The 9% year-on-year increase in May was the highest inflation in prices paid by producers since 2011 when the economies were recovering from the 2008/9 global financial crisis and price inflation was a major concern. Now inflation, triggered by a falling lari, is once again a headache that the Central Bank has to confront.

The lari has lost around 20% of its value this year. The Georgian Central Bank has been putting up interest rates to try to strengthen its currency and dampen inflationary pressures.

Geostat’s Consumer Price Index measured a jump in inflation of 0.6% in May, measuring a rise to 3.5% of year-on-year inflation, its highest since September 2014.

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Kyrgyzstan to face inflation

JUNE 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan will only see the benefits of its membership of the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union in 2017, media quoted economy minister Oleg Pankratov as saying. He said inflation will initially soar in Kyrgyzstan once it joins the economic group.

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Uzbekistan-Russia trade drops

JUNE 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Trade between Russia and Uzbekistan has dropped slightly last year because of the worsening economic conditions, Vladimir Tyurdenev, the Russian ambassador in Tashkent, told media. Mr Tyurdenev’s comments are a rare admission by an official that the downturn in Russia’s economy has hit Uzbekistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Azerbaijani gas exports rise

JUNE 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan exported 4.1% more gas in the first five months of the year compared to the same period last year, media quoted the country’s statistics agency as saying. Azerbaijan wants to expand gas exports.

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Property price fall in Azerbaijan

JUNE 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Experts in Azerbaijan’s real estate sector are predicting a drop in house prices this year as the market reacts to a decline in economic conditions in the region, media reported. A sharp fall in oil prices and the value of the Russian rouble have hit the former Soviet region.

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Fuel prices rise in Kyrgyzstan

JUNE 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Fuel prices in Kyrgyzstan are rising, media reported quoting the Kyrgyz Association of fuel traders. They said extra tax imposed by the Kyrgyz government had triggered the rise. Kyrgyzstan is also facing general inflation due to the falling value of its currency.

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Kyrgyz MPs want to impose gold export tax

JUNE 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – MPs in Kyrgyzstan’s parliament have called for the introduction of a new tax on gold exports, media reported, pitting themselves, once again, against the country’s largest foreign investor.

The Kumtor gold east of the country is Kyrgyzstan’s single biggest industrial asset and parliamentarians said that its exports needed to be targeted to raise extra revenue for the national budget.

Centerra Gold, listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, owns Kumtor. The Kyrgyz government is a minority owner in Centerra. It has been fighting to increase its stake in the company and to gain more control over Kumtor itself. Earlier this year, a Kyrgyz PM resigned after failing to win concessions.

Mirlan Bakirov, an MP for the opposition Onuguu (Progress) party, proposed a 20% gold export tax to be instated at the beginning of 2016, while Alla Izmalkova of the Social Democratic Party argued for a similar tariff to start in 2018.

Official data showed that in 2014, Kyrgyzstan exported 85,000 tonnes of gold, an increase of around 36% from mine in the 2013.

But the issue of taxing gold exports has been passing around the Kyrgyz parliament for years without ever being resolved.

Earlier in June, Kozhobek Ryspayev, member of the Committee on Fuel and Energy, said an export tax would harm the mining industry. Valentin Bogdetsky, member of the Board of the Kyrgyz Mining Association similarly stated: “The imposition of an export duty on gold is not a solution to the problems between the industry and the government.”

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Uzbek economic data defies downturn

JUNE 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek legislation rubber- stamped the government’s report on fulfilling the 2014 and 2015 budget which reported GDP growth of 8.1% despite a general downturn in economic conditions across the region.

The glowing numbers appear at odds with other economic indicators leaking out of the country.

According to analysts interviewed by the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Uzbek service, brewing financial trouble, triggered by the government’s failure to pay salaries, pensions and stipends over the last several months could spark turmoil.

The Uzbek economy has been shrinking over the last couple years caused by falling global oil prices, a boycott of Uzbek cotton and diminishing remittances from Uzbek labour migrants in Russia as predicted by the World Bank. The World Bank has said that Uzbekistan’s economy will shrink further in 2015-16.

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

IMF forecasts Azerbaijan’s economy

JUNE 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The IMF changed its forecast for Azerbaijan’s economy this year to reflect improved conditions, media reported. Reports quoted the IMF mission chief in Baku, Raja Almarzogi, as saying the IMF had increased its economic growth forecast in 2015 to 1.8% from 0.6%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)