OCT. 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Profit at the company which runs Almaty International Airport for the first nine months of the year hit $33m, up 65% from the same period last year, media reported. A group of investors linked to Kazakhstan’s business elite owns Almaty International Airport.
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 29 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s EuroChem, one of the world’s largest fertiliser companies, said it had begun phosphate mining in southern Kazakhstan. EuroChem is controlled by Russian businessman Andrei Melnichenko who is considered to be close to the Kremlin. EuroChem operations are expected to create hundreds of jobs.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The three founders of Kazakhstan-based miner ENRC have applied to de-list the company from the London Stock Exchange (LSE), media reported. The so-called ENRC Trio — Alexander Machkevitch, Alijan Ibragimov and Pathokh Chodiev — want to pull ENRC from the LSE after a series of corporate governance scandals.
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 24 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan increased its state-imposed cap on fuel prices by 7 tenge to 117 tenge ($0.76) per litre of 92-octane petrol. Prices for the lower grade 80-octane petrol and diesel were left unchanged.
The closure of the refinery in Shymkent for scheduled repairs has triggered localised fuel shortages in the weeks prior to the price hike, scheduled for November.
In Southern Kazakhstan fuel was sold only through coupons and in limited quantities. Lines of cars queued at petrol stations that quickly ran out of 92-octane fuel and supplied only the 80-octane version.
Fuel price rises hurt consumers and tension is brewing in Kazakhstan.
According to the Kazakhstan Fuel Association (KFA), a fuel industry lobby group, routine repairs at the Shymkent refinery caused the shortage. It is only one of three refineries in Kazakhstan.
The government has instead blamed a general global increase in oil for the rise on the petrol price cap.
Ordinary drivers are even more frustrated. They blame owners of petrol stations for holding back supplies until the fuel price cap had been raised.
They’ve also had to stomach a higher price increase than originally flagged up.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Utter the word Borat to a Kazakh diplomat and he or she may cringe.
It took years to purge the image of Kazakhstan — which wants to be seen as a modern, progressive country — from Borat, the boorish fictional character created by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for his 2006 film “Borat: Cultural learnings of America make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan”.
Now, though, it appears that the BBC has created another comedy to, potentially at least, poke more fun at the Central Asian republics.
The BBC will broadcast the first episode of its new three-part comedy on Oct. 23 called “Ambassadors”. It’s essentially a sideways, tongue-in-cheek look at the British diplomatic service and the challenges of a foreign posting in a little-known and far-away country.
The twist, for Central Asia at least, is that the fictional little-known and far-away country is called Tazbekistan. No prizes for guessing the mish-mash of republics it is based upon.
And there’s more. The pre-broadcasting blurb goes further. The plot is based around an incoming British ambassador’s attempts to get to grips with Tazbekistan’s idiosyncrasies. This includes being oil-rich and having a woeful human rights record.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Grigory Marchenko, the former chairman of the Kazakh Central Bank, told Russian media that he is considering moving into the private financial sector. Mr Marchenko also denied speculation that he was sacked from the Central Bank earlier this month. Instead, he insisted that he had quit for family reasons.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan plans to update all its 11 national airports to meet international standards by 2017, media quoted the deputy minister for communications and transport, Azat Bekturov, as saying. Mr Bekturov said the airport at Kokshetau, northern Kazakhstan, had already been upgraded.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 21 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Highlighting just how dangerous driving is in Kazakhstan, media reported that the Pulitzer Center in New York rated Kazakh roads as amongst the most deadly in the world outside Africa. Kazakhstan averages 21.9 deaths per 100,000 people every year. Comparatively, this is seven times more than Sweden.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev appointed Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a seasoned politician and diplomat, to be the Speaker of the Senate. Speaker of the Senate is one of the highest ranking positions in the Kazakh government and Mr Tokayev’s appointment triggered succession chatter.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — At the annual conference of the ruling Nur Otan political party, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said he supported the introduction of a wealth tax and wanted more people to learn English. The Nur Otan conference and Mr Nazarbayev’s pronouncements are a decent weather mast for future policy in Kazakhstan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
