Tag Archives: Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan to issue Eurobond, again

JUNE 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan will issue a £2b Eurobond, economy minister Yerbolat Dossayev told local media.

Mr Dossayev didn’t give specific dates for the issue but Reuters reported that Citigroup and JP Morgan are joint book- runners and Kazkommerts Securities and Halyk Finance are joint lead managers for the issue.

This is the second major dollar-denominated Eurobond that Kazakhstan has issued in the last year. In 2014, Kazakhstan issued a $2.5b Eurobond, its first since 2000.

Kazakhstan has been dealing with the fall out of a slide in global oil prices and a dip in the fortunes of Russia’s economy. Although the Central Bank has not stated just why it has borrowed so heavily in the past year, it is likely linked to this economic downturn.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Kazakhstan awarded Snowden

JUNE 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Union of Journalists handed Edward Snowden, the former US intelligence agent who is now living in exile in Russia, a special award for services to investigative journalism. The US wants Mr Snowden extradited to face espionage-related charges.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Kazakhstan’s GDP suffers high energy intensity

JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan is one of the least energy efficient countries in the world for generating economic growth, Tomasz Telma, regional director for Europe, Middle East and North Africa at the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, told Bnews.kz.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Exam stress may trigger suicides in Kazakhstan

ALMATY/ASTANA/ Kazakhstan , JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Politicians, teachers and schoolchildren in Kazakhstan are debating the value of a new standardised test that gives access to university grants and financial aid.

Some have linked the test to the high rate of youth suicides.

And the link may not be far-fetched. Kazakhstan has one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world and it has risen since the exam was released a few years ago.

At the Hazret Sultan mosque in Astana, the largest in Central Asia, deputy Imam Maksat Kairgaliyev said that the stress the new test placed students under and the relatively high suicide rate for young people in Kazakhstan were linked.

“This has unfortunately become a pattern,” he said.

Introduced in 2009, the Unified National Test (ENT is its Russian acronym) has become less and less popular among students.

Last May in Aktobe, two 17-year old classmates killed themselves. Their suicide notes both blamed ENT. Another 18-year-old schoolgirl in southern Kazakhstan tried to kill herself just after sitting the ENT test.

Azamat, a first-year student at a university in Almaty, told the Bulletin: “Kids freak out because their future depends [on the test] and which university picks them.”

MPs have also raised concerns. In November 2012, Dariga Nazarbayeva, the eldest daughter of the president and member of the Parliament, was among the first to connect the ENT to youth suicides during a question time with the minister of education.

But the government has defended bringing in the ENT as an effective way of measuring who the best people are to receive grants and various financial aid. Deputy PM Berdybek Saparbayev said the link is inappropriate. “High numbers of suicide are recorded in our country every year,” he said. “But it’s not appropriate to link that to the youth fearing the ENT.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Kazakhstan increased gold reserves

JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan increased its gold reserves for the 32nd month in a row, the IMF said. Kazakhstan’s gold reserves measure 203.4 tonnes. Despite spending heavily to protect the tenge, the Kazakh Central Bank has maintained its policy of buying gold.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Kazakh BTA ends banking

JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh Central Bank cancelled BTA’s banking licence, officially ending its banking activities. BTA, which had once been one of Kazakhstan’s biggest banks, merged with Kazkommertzbank earlier this year. It assumed a massive proportion of bad debt in the 2008/9 Global Financial Crisis.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Kazakhstan pays German politicians

JUNE 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan is paying former senior German politicians large salaries to whitewash its reputation in Europe, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported quoting emails it has seen from an Austria-based law firm. The magazine named former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, former president Horst Koehler and former interior minister Otto Schily.

ENDS

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

Kazakh court fines Karachaganak

JUNE 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in west Kazakhstan handed the Karachaganak oil and gas project a fine of 7.3b tenge (roughly $40m) for excessive flaring, media reported quoting a court statement. Karachaganak’s shareholders are BG Group, Eni, Chevron, Lukoil and Kazmunaigas.

ENDS

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

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)

Kazakh telecom plans IPO in London

JUNE 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kaztelecom, Kazakhstan’s stateowned fixed line telecoms company, plans to launch an IPO in London, its CEO Kuanyshbek Yessekeyev, said in an interview to the KazTag news agency. If the IPO does progress, and Mr Yessekeyev didn’t give a timeframe, it will attract much interest.

ENDS

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