APRIL 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Speaking at a regional conference, Armenian PM Hovik Abrahamyan said he forecast economic growth in 2015 despite predictions of the opposite. Media quoted Mr Abrahamyan as saying he thought the economy had grown by 2.5% in Q1.
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(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)
APRIL 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev dismissed rumours a devaluation of the tenge was now imminent after he had won another election. “There are no such plans,” he said at a news conference. The tenge has come under enormous pressure to devalue because of a fall in oil prices and a drop in the Russian rouble.
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(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)
APRIL 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s Central Bank held interest rates steady at 11% because of slowing inflation, media reported. Previously the Central Bank has aggressively raised interest rates to try and curb inflation generated by the falling value of the som.
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(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)
APRIL 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A move by Tajikistan’s government to ban exchange booths from dealing in currencies has pushed currency trading into the black market and reduced the value of the Tajik somoni further, Eurasianet reported. The somoni has lost around 17% of its value this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)
APRIL 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan has made plans to deal with a sustained slump in demand from Russia for its cars, media reported quoting an Uzbek government source.
It said that sales would remain relatively low for its cars until 2019.
This is important because demand from Russia is the main driver of Uzbek car production. This is centred on the GM Uzbekistan plant in Andijan, east Uzbekistan.
GM Uzbekistan, which is 25% owned by US carmaker GM and 75% owned by the Uzbek government, recorded a 38% slump in car sales to Russia in 2014. It also recorded a slump of around 60% in the first quarter of the year, according to reports.
News agencies said sales to Russia between January and March were 5,411 cars from GM Uzbekistan compared to 12,858 in 2014.
Like other countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, Uzbekistan is strug- gling to cope with the severe economic collapse over the past few months, triggered by a collapse in oil prices and sanctions on Russia. The Russian economy is a vital engine for the wider regional economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)
APRIL 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s Central Bank ordered currency exchange points throughout the country to be closed to try and protect its somoni currency losing more value. The somoni is under pressure as remittances from Russia dry up. It has lost 15% of its value this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -The United States has decided to cut its so-called assistance budget to Armenia which funds various social programmes run by USAID, the overseas development arm of the US government, and its embassy.
The US defended the cuts by saying that dealing with the rise of the Islamic extremist group IS, the Ebola epidemic in Africa and the civil war in Ukraine had placed extra pressure on its resources and that cuts had to be paid.
“These reductions in funding for certain of our assistance programs in Armenia were necessitated by budgetary demands and additional global priorities, and in no way reflect the quality of the programs that have been implemented, or the strength of the US-Armenia relationship,” the Voice of Armenia website quoted a US embassy statement as saying.
Sceptics, though, said the US decision may be linked to Armenia joining the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union in January, effectively turning its back on further integration with the West. Turkey and Azerbaijan have also had their US assistance aid budget cut, although these two countries are far wealthier than Armenia and are less likely to feel the squeeze.
The US did not say by how much it would cut Armenia’s assistance budget although it said that since 1992, the US had given more than $2b to Armenia.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia received 24% less money from overseas in March 2015 compared to March 2014, the Central Bank said. The biggest source of overseas remittances is Russia. Sanctions over its involvement in Ukraine and a drop in oil prices have tipped the Russian economy into recession and triggered a knock-on effect.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s pharmaceuticals industry is growing fast, data from the statistics agency Geostat showed.
In 2014, Georgian pharmaceuticals companies exports to other CIS countries increased by nearly 50%, Geostat said.
A pharmaceuticals director at a local company said it was because domestic rules changed last year and meant that people needed prescriptions to buy more drugs. This in turn pushed pharmaceutical makers to find new markets for their drugs.
“The increase in exports was caused by the increased number of medication for export and if earlier the company sold 20 varieties of medicines abroad, today the list includes more than 50,” Boris Jijolava, export manager at Georgian pharmaceuticals maker GMP told the Caucasian Business Week website.
Geostat said the value of drugs exported by Georgian companies to the former Soviet Union increased to around $92m in 2014 from $52m in 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s government will have to dip into savings built up in its Oil Fund to prop up its ailing economy, economists have said.
They said the Azerbaijani government will not cut the state budget sufficiently despite a massive fall in the price of oil and gas.
“If the government does not cut budget spending the only real way to cover the deficit will be calling back State Oil Fund’s reserves abroad, or the government must have another big devaluation,” Samir Aliyev, an independent economist at the monthly Economic Forum magazine, told the Bulletin.
At Dec. 31 2014, the Oil Fund was worth around $37b.
The downturn in energy prices since last summer has hit Azerbaijan hard. It devalued its manat current by a third this year.
Rovshan Agayev, an independent economist, also told the Bulletin that even during the financial crisis of 2008 the government did not increase spending from the National Oil fund.
“This is a result of mismanagement of the state budget money for many years,” he said.
The independent MP Vahid Ahmedov told RFE/RL it was acceptable for the government to use cash from the fund, created in 1999, to prop up the economy.
“What was the Oil Fund is created for?” he said. “To save some money for the future generation and as well as to help the economy in crisis times.”
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
