Tag Archives: government

Survey says corruption in Azerbaijan is waning

JULY 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijanis, apparently, feel that the government is their best defence against corruption in the public sector.

In a new global corruption survey Transparency International asked roughly 1,000 people in Azerbaijan between September 2012 and March 2013 for their impression of official corruption.

The results were, broadly, positive. Of the interviewees, 41% said that corruption amongst officials was improving in Azerbaijan, 32% said it was roughly staying the same and 27% said it was getting worse.

Georgia, by contrast though, has been the region’s standard bearer for combating corruption and 70% of respondents in the Transparency International survey said that official corruption had decreased.

Back in Azerbaijan, nearly 60% of respondents thought corruption was a serious problem in the public sector but 70% also said government action was reasonably effective in dealing with this vice.

The institutions that respondents thought were most corrupt were the judiciary, medical services and the police. In each case over 40% of respondents thought these institutions were corrupt.

It may just be a snapshot but Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer of Azerbaijan provides an interesting psychological insight.

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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)

Kyrgyzstan to sell its Torpedo factory

JULY 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan wants to sell its Soviet-era torpedo factory on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul, media reported. Russia has previously offered to buy the factory and is still the most likely purchaser. Media quoted a Kyrgyz government official saying the factory was worth $30m and the surrounding land another $180m.

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(News report from Issue No. 142, published on July 8 2013)

Kazakh energy minister sacked

JULY 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked his energy minister, reportedly because of continued delays to the Kashagan oil project, Kazakhstan’s flagship energy development. Sauat Mynbayev had been energy minister since 2007. He moves to head Kazmunaigas, the Kazakh state energy company. Uzakbai Karabalin, a technocrat, becomes the new energy minister.

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(News report from Issue No. 142, published on July 8 2013)

Water woes for Kazakhstan

JUNE 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government is considering changing the name of its ministry for environmental protection to the ministry of environment and water resources, media reported. This is important as it underlines how vital water is for Kazakhstan and the wider Central Asia region.

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(News report from Issue No. 141, published on July 1 2013)

Political fragility in Georgia

JUNE 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Georgia arrested several more officials linked to the previous government of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s UNM party. UNM members have said the accusations of corruption are false. The row highlights political instability in Georgia.

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(News report from Issue No. 141, published on July 1 2013)

Kazakhstan updates its civil service

JULY 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Most of countries of the former Soviet Union are a byword for bureaucratic meddling, corruption and obfuscation.

Kazakhstan, though, is trying to change. And in a radical way. In June, the Kazakh government finished recruiting 940 civil servants for a special cadre of professional bureaucrats. The idea, first espoused in President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s state-of-the-nation address in December 2012, is to modernise the system.

This so-called A-class of civil servants had to pass an entry exam (2,204 applied for the positions, according to media) and they will receive training and coaching similar to their Western counterparts.

There is still a long way to go for Kazakhstan’s embryonic civil service reform and putting these lofty ideas into practice will be hard. Still, these are encouraging signs.

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(News report from Issue No. 141, published on July 1 2013)

Kazakhstan’s Halyk Bank has plan for its pension fund

JUNE 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government’s plan to unite pension savings in one fund is looking vulnerable.

Unveiled in January, the plan had been greeted with a decidedly mixed reaction. The idea was to draw efficiencies from a single scheme and to create a fund worth roughly $20b to dip into during an economic recession.

Detractors of the plan, that would see 10 private pension schemes and one state-run pension scheme unified under the Central Bank, said it would be uncompetitive.

Kazakhstan had been the first post-Soviet country to encourage private pension schemes and many bankers considered ditching them tantamount to being a turn-coat.

Now Halyk Bank, which has the largest private pension scheme in Kazakhstan, has said it would rather sell off its pension scheme for cash by the end of 2013 than swap it for shares in nationalised bank BTA.

In March, Kazakhstan deputy PM, Kairat Kelimbetov said that the three biggest pension schemes would be offered shares in state-run bank BTA in exchange. BTA went bankrupt in 2009 during the global financial crisis.

BTA bank is still distressed and had to re-structure its $11b debt for the second time last year.

Halyk Bank’s opinion counts as it is the biggest bank in Kazakhstan by volume of cash lent.

The move to switch Kazakhstan’s pension scheme was always going meet resistance. This is likely to be an unsettling period for the Kazakh banking sector.

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(News report from Issue No. 140, published on June 24 2013)

Former border guard chief tried in Kazakhstan

JUNE 14 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Almaty began the trial of Alim Khasenov, a former deputy head of Kazakhstan’s border guards service, for corruption, media reported. The case highlights endemic official corruption in Kazakhstan and problems at its border guards service. Mr Khasenov is charged with stealing $2m.

(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)

Kazakhstan undergoes a pension reform

JUNE 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government wants to modernise its pension system. Among other things this means making women work five years longer until they are 63, in line with men.

The logic appears simple but the issue has hit a nerve and triggered a rare show of ground-level dissent.

But, if the public dissent was rare, the government’s climb-down has been little short of extraordinary.

On June 11 Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, ever watchful for an opportunity to flourish his man-of-the-people credentials, sacked labour minister Serik Abdenov who had been charged with pushing through the pension reforms.

Mr Abdenov had cut an increasingly forlorn and isolated figure. Audiences have openly laughed at him, he has stumbled over his words when trying to explain the reforms and a protester has pelted him with eggs.

But the climb-down didn’t stop there.

Mr Nazarbayev has also said that the entire pension reform needs to be looked at once again and suggested that the changes should come into effect in 2018 and not in 2014. Since Mr Nazarbayev’s intervention state-influenced media have been putting out stories suggesting that the pension reforms have gone too far.

In Kazakhstan, this is code for a rare government U-turn.

(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)

Kazakhstan cuts national budget

JUNE 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s parliament reduced the 2013 state budget by 4% because of low prices for metal and other mining exports. Metals have become an important part of Kazakhstan’s export earnings over the past few years but a global recession and sanctions against Iran, previously a major customer, have hit earnings.

(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)