MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Throwing the gauntlet down to his Turkish counterpart, Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan invited Turkey’s president to commemorate the 100th anniversary of what Armenia calls the genocide of its people by Ottoman Turks next year. Turkey denies the charges and instead says people were killed during inter-ethnic fighting.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – TBC Bank is aiming to be the second Georgian company to list on the stock exchange in London. It named a price range for its shares at its proposed IPO at the end of June of between $13 and $16.
This is an important IPO for Georgia and the wider former Soviet Union. For Georgia, TBC Bank will be the first IPO since the end of Mikheil Saakashvili’s era as president. For the wider former Soviet Union, it will test investors’ appetite for buying into the region while the conflict in Ukraine appears to be worsening.
Rival Bank of Georgia floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2006 and is now part of the FTSE-250.
TBC Bank, valued at nearly $800m, aims to float around 50% of its stock in the IPO. It is the biggest bank in Georgia in terms of retail deposits, with a 33% share of the market.
The TBC floatation will also be a test of how investors view the Georgian economy. It has improved over the last year, partly because relations with Russia have improved, but there are still plenty of weaknesses. Inflation is still stubbornly low and direct foreign investment, so important, is taking some time to pick up again.
Still, with the South Caucasus’ status as a transit region for cargo and energy products between the Caspian Sea and Europe growing, Georgia has experienced an economic re-bound.
The TBC IPO at the end of June will be a good indication of how investors feel about the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
May 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Commission pledged to give 30m euros of financial aid to Georgia, media reported.European Council president, Herman Van Rompuy, made the declaration on a trip to Tbilisi. The EU and NATO have been trying to assure Georgia of its support since Russia’s de facto annexation of Crimea from Ukraine earlier this year.
May 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan and Afghanistan are discussing setting up economic free zones, media reported after a meeting between their economy ministers in Dushanbe. Although no agreements were signed, this is a sign that Central Asian states want to incorporate Afghanistan into their economic area.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – NATO officially opened its representative office in Tashkent, a year after setting it up. NATO has been cultivating improved relations with Uzbekistan because it wants to extract most of its kit from Afghanistan back to Europe through the Uzbek railway network.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 18/19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev travelled to Hanoi for his first trip to Vietnam. While there he signed various agreements with his Vietnamese counterpart Truong Tan Sang to deepen bi- lateral relations. Like Azerbaijan, Vietnam is also developing its off-shore energy industry.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The day after Azerbaijan assumed the chairmanship of the Council of Europe, a court in Baku sentenced an opposition journalist to eight years in prison for holding illegal weapons.
The Council of Europe is the European body, covering 47 countries, that supposedly spreads Europe’s ideals of human rights and democratic elections to wider Europe.
No matter that Azerbaijan has been heavily criticised over the past few years for crushing dissent and locking up troublesome journalists. It was its turn to head the group. The chairmanship rotates in alphabetical order every six months.
Parviz Hasimli, the now imprisoned activist, was just the latest opposition reporter to be sent to prison. There have been many before him. In most cases the defendants, with good reason, have said that the charges are politically motivated.
Azerbaijan has said that it will use its presidency of the Council of Europe to fight corruption and human rights.
This sound good but could well be a hollow promise. Corruption and human rights appear to be worsening in Azerbaijan.
Instead, for Azerbaijan, its chairmanship is useful as a smokescreen.
For many of Azerbaijan’s critics, its leadership of the Council of Europe, supposed to uphold human rights across the continent, is an insult.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s gas export volume is set to fall by nearly 10% this year because of a decline in sales to Russia, a senior SOCAR official told Reuters. SOCAR is the Azerbaijani state energy company. This is important as gas is a major currency earner for Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin)- Kyrgyzstan will definitely aim to join the Russia-led Customs Union, Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev told journalists in Shanghai where he had been meeting China’s leaders. Mr Atambayev’s statement adds extra impetus to Kyrgyzstan’s drive to join the group which also includes Kazakhstan and Belarus.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin)- Kazakhstan will give Afghanistan around $2m of emergency aid in 2014, emergencies minister Vladimir Bozhko said. The West has been putting more pressure on Afghanistan’s neighbours, and especially Kazakhstan, to play amore prominent role in Afghanistan once NATO forces quit the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
