SEPT. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – If oil prices continue to fall, Kazakhstan may cut production back to 73m tonnes a year, media quoted deputy energy minister Uzakbai Karabalin as saying. Kazakhstan is projected to produce around 80m tonnes of oil this year. Oil is the main driver of the Kazakh economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
ALMATY, SEPT. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Japanese car-maker Honda has decided to quit the Kazakh and the Russian markets until economic conditions improve, media reported.
Honda’s final shipment of cars to Kazakhstan was at the start of 2015 and to Russia in Dec. 2014.
The fall in value of currencies and the collapse in the car market had forced Honda to leave.
Weak local currencies have pushed up prices of imported cars.
A Honda spokesperson denied that the company was quitting the former Soviet Union altogether.
“We think the market has potential in the future so we’re not pulling out,” she told the FT. “We can respond flexibly since we don’t have a plant in Russia.”
Honda car sales in Kazakhstan fell by around 50% in 2015. In Russia, they shrank by 78%.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Almaty ordered the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, until a few years ago one of the only genuine opposition parties in the country, to disband permanently. Media reported that the Kazakh ministry of justice said the party had misrepre- sented its activities. In 2011, a few months before a parliamentary election in 2012, a court suspended the Communist Party.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — London-listed Roxi Petroleum said it had downgraded the value of its assets in Kazakhstan by 28% after last month’s devaluation of the tenge. Roxi’s main activities are focused in the Mangistau region, west Kazakhstan. Since the announcement, Roxi’s share price has fallen by 12%.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 4 2015, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government scrapped petrol price controls, another major admission that the market rather than the state is better placed to direct its economy.
Government officials blamed the volatility in foreign exchange markets for scrapping price controls on petrol which immediately jumped in price by around 40%.
Pressured by low oil prices, rising inflation and the depressed value of the Russian rouble, the Kazakh Central Bank released the tenge from its US dollar peg last month. It fell 23% in one day and is now trading at an all-time low of around 262/$1 which made petrol excessively cheap.
Deputy PM Bakhytzhan Sagintayev was handed the task of explaining the new policy to journalists.
“Having studied all possible options and discussed the issue with market players, we decided there should be a flexible pricing model given the ongoing volatility at the FX market,” he said. “The Government has decided to stop regulating prices for AI-92 and AI-93 petrol.”
In Almaty, Kazakhstan largest city, the effect was immediate. Queues snaked out of petrol stations as drivers rushed to fill their tanks.
Guldariya Iskakova, an accountant, summed up the feeling of people in Almaty about the petrol price rises. “It is awful. We are now seriously thinking to use public bus,” she said. “Our expenses have increased several times. The prices for petrol increased by 20 tenge in just one day.”
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
ALMATY/Kazakhstan, AUG. 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — FC Astana, the quasi Kazakh government football project, may have qualified for the UEFA Champions League for the first time but not everybody was celebrating.
Football fans in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s former capital, noted FC Astana’s success in beating Apoel Nicosia 2-1 over two legs in a qualifying round for Europe’s top football competition, but only grudgingly.
Azimat, 27, was taking a lunch-break from his job selling French wine at a shop in central Almaty. It was one of those graceful late summer days in Almaty. Snow-capped mountains in the background glinted bright in the sun; tree-lined streets provided a natural, fresh canopy for pedestrians. The day had a laid-back — louche, even — feel about it.
“This is definitely Kazakhstan’s glory,” Azimat said of FC Astana’s unexpected victory. “But, they are celebrating in Astana and not down here.” He smiled, proudly. “We are Almaty.”
People in Almaty are used to Astana’s status as the loud, brash newcomer usurping their beloved city. Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev has treated Astana as his pet project, building grandiose government ministries and replicas of some of Europe’s most famous monuments such as the Arc de Triomphe. He made it his capital in 1997, wary of Almaty’s reputation for dissent. Since then he has poured billions into constructing the city of his dreams and shifted business and government agencies north to Astana. The Central Bank will be the last major government agency to move to Astana from Almaty when it shifts its office at the end of 2016.
Much like the city, FC Astana is a new football team. It was established in 2009, wears the national colours and is sponsored by Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund. It has been created to succeed.
Almaty’s team Kairat was the football powerhouse in Kazakhstan but has been firmly superseded by FC Astana and its stars. A few hours after Azimat espoused on FC Astana’s success, Kairat was playing France’s Bordeaux in a qualifying match for Europe’s second tier UEFA Europa League. It won the match but still lost the two-leg tie. Once again, Almaty residents will have to look on as Astana carries the Kazakh flag, searching for more glory.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
SEPT. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Shares in Toronto- and London listed Tethys Petroleum, whose focus is on oil and gas production and exploration in Central Asia, fell significantly after rival Nostrum on Aug. 28 cut a third off the value of an earlier buyout offer.
Tethys shares in Toronto fell by 20% and in London by 29.3%. Tethys responded by saying that it would honour the exclusivity agreement with Nostrum and then look to other companies for potential buyers.
Nostrum said that it had cut its offer after a new due diligence project showed that the original offer had overvalued the company.
In mining, shares in London-listed KAZ Minerals lost 14.2% of their value between Aug. 28 and Sept. 4, wiping gains from August’s devaluation.
KAZ Minerals used to be called Kazakhmys and is focused on copper production.
The Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs) of TBC Bank, which are traded in London, fell by around 8% over the week to $9.12, the lowest price to date for the bank.
TBC, which is the largest retail bank in Georgia and counts PM Irakli Garibashvili as a director, has been trading its GDRs in London since 2014.
The Georgian economy, like the rest of the region, has been dealing with the fallout from the slowdown in Russia’s economy. Georgia is also vulnerable to Greece, its second largest source of remittances. There was no particular news from TBC that would have pressures its GDRs.
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
SEPT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The New York-based Human Rights Watch criticised Kazakhstan’s commitment to free speech after it ordered the independent-minded ADAM magazine to be suspended for three months for failing to publish copies in both Russian and Kazakh. The authorities closed down its predecessor ADAM Bol in 2014.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
SEPT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian car manufacturer AvtoVAZ said it would increase prices in the Kazakh market by 3%. “The new pricing policy is due to changing macroeconomic factors and increased competition,” a company official told kapital.kz. Kazakhstan has devalued its currency and inflation is rising. This is the fourth price rise in 2015.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Increasingly concerned about radicalising influences, Kazakhstan’s prosecutor-general said it was banning 700 websites and 21 religious organisation. Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states are worried about extremists linked to the IS group recruiting disenfranchised young men to their causes. Free speech activists have accused the government of using these concerns as a pretext for clamping down on media.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
