JUNE 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan intends to build a centre for Islamic finance in Almaty, Central Bank chief Kairat Kelimbetov said. Mr Kelimbetov said the centre would be modelled on the City of London and offer potential investors tax and visa benefits.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
JUNE 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The third branch of a gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan, through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to China opened on May 31, media reported. Line C, as it is known, will double the pipeline’s capacity to 55b cubic metres of gas per year by 2015. Gas exports to China are vital to Central Asia’s economies.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
MAY 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Investors holding bonds in Kazakhstan’s Alliance Bank rejected a restructuring deal, Reuters reported. This would have been the second restructuring deal in four years for the bank that was effectively nationalised in 2009 during the global financial crisis. A new deal will have to struck to re-structure the debt.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
MAY 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian president Vladimir Putin threw his support behind Armenia’s planned entry into the Eurasian Economic Union (EaEU). Media quoted Mr Putin as saying that Armenia should become a member as soon as possible. Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan are currently the only members of the EaEU. Kyrgyzstan also wants to become an EaEU member.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
May 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) -Kazakhstan is considering buying Predator drones from US company General Atomics, media reported. A final deal has not yet been signed but the news is another sign that Kazakhstan is investing heavily in its military. A senior official at the ministry of defence told IHS that Kazakhstan planned to sign 30 arms deals worth $1.2b.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
MAY 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a ceremony in Astana, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko signed into existence the Eurasian Economic Union (EaEU).
The EaEU is the successor of the Customs Union and is designed to further integrate its members’ economies. The rhetoric has been of high praise for the EaEU but the reaction on the street has been markedly different, as a correspondent for The Bulletin discovered in Almaty.
Berik, a 35-year-old office worker wasn’t even sure of the treaty. “Who are the parties involved?” he said. “Belarus and Russia. I’m not sure, with them it could go either way. It could either be a success or a failure.”
An ethnic Russian lady hurrying along the street also said she doubted the value of the group. “It would have been better if they had not signed the treaty,” she said.
Other people agreed. Most had either not heard of the EaEU or said they doubted it would be positive.
One of the few people to support the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union was Saken a 50-year-old man who worked in real estate. He said that Soviet era ties remained and that the union would be stronger than if countries pursued their own agendas.
“In the Eurasian Union we will welcome troubled countries like Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, who are not really as stable as we are, but we will definitely help them, with the same friendship we used to relate to each other during the Soviet era,” he said.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
MAY 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s parliament passed the first reading of a bill that will give a tax amnesty for people willing to repatriate cash held in offshore accounts.
The amnesty is designed to boost the size of the legal economy.
Ardak Tengebayev, deputy finance minister, said the plan would bring much needed cash into the Kazakh economy.
“We expect a turnover of 2 trillion tenge ($11b) and we hope that this sum will be reintroduced into the country’s economy,” he said
A similar amnesty in 2006-07 pulled in assets of $7b.
Not everybody, though, thought the amnesty was a good idea. Viktor Yambayev, chief of the Almaty Association of
Entrepreneurs, said the plan was designed to help only the country’s rich.
“This amnesty doesn’t affect the majority of the population. Instead, it benefits government employees, monopolist companies, extractive industries,” he told a Bulletin correspondent.
An amnesty may draw in some, much needed, cash into the Kazakh economy but another problem, the divide between the rich and poor, is intensifying.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
May 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) -Kazakhstan signed a deal with Russia to build a new nuclear plant in Kurchatov, a city in the north-east of the country. Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev has said for years that he wanted to build another nuclear power plant, although the location and partners needed to build it had not been specified.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
MAY 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Following the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) pledged to lend Kazakhstan an extra $2b over the next three years. The deal was signed at the annual Astana Economic Forum.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Saudi Arabia’s Savola Group has sold its food oil business in Kazakhstan to a Russian company for $28.5m, Reuters reported. Savola didn’t name the Russian company. It said that the sale was part of a strategy to divest units that were not making money.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
