AUG. 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The CEO of French energy company Total, Christophe de Margerie, said that Kashagan, the Caspian Sea oil field that Kazakhstan has pinned its economic hopes to, will begin production shortly, Bloomberg News reported. Total is one of the Kashagan shareholders. Production at Kashagan is several years overdue
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
AUG. 29 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — After several months of deliberation, the Kazakh government signed into law a new energy saving code that should turn the country into a beacon of green, power-saving efficiency in the former Soviet Union.
For foreign investors and business, the code — dubbed Energy Efficiency 2020 — is something of a quandary. It will create opportunities for some businesses but also additional cost for industry.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev decreed that by 2015, the country needed to reduce its power consumption by 10%. Energy Efficiency 2020 aims to cut this by 25%.
Mr Nazarbayev’s motivation for this decision may have been EXPO-2017, a global opportunity to showcase his gleaming capital, Astana. Part of the EXPO-2017 message is clean, efficient energy.
In any case, the ramifications will mainly be felt by large industry. Kazakh media reported that under the new code it will process energy audits of 2,000 industrial sites.
Those businesses that don’t pass the audit will have to buy and implement a series of energy saving technologies and techniques.
Another part of Kazakhstan’s society that will be heavily targeted to improve energy efficiency is insulation in Soviet-era housing. This is often leaky, spilling out much of the heat generated by the centrally-controlled system.
It is unclear who will foot the bill for this ambitious target, but the government said it has already allocated $7.1b for various energy saving projects.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
AUG. 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Halyk Bank, Kazakhstan’s largest bank by lending, posted an 8.1% rise in the first half of 2013 compared to the same in 2012. Halyk Bank’s profit rose because of interest payments linked to an 18% rise in consumer loans, good news for the Kazakh banking sector which is recovering from the global financial crisis.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
AUG. 31 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — US singers Beyonce and Kanye West sang at the wedding of Aysultan Nazarbayev, grandson of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Leaders of ex-Soviet states often pay popstars to sing at private concerts. In June, Jennifer Lopez sang for Turkmen President Kurbangkuly Berdymukhamedov.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
AUG. 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Keen to strengthen control over the tenge, the Kazakh Central Bank switched from managing the value of its national currency against the dollar to using an aggregated basket of currencies.
The US dollar will still make up 70% of the new basket, Kazakh Central Bank chief Grigory Marchenko said, but the euro will also make up 20% and the Russian rouble 10%.
This system is more in line with a currency basket used by the Russian Central Bank to determine the value of the rouble.
In July, the Central Bank came under pressure to devalue the tenge after it dropped to 154 to the dollar. Since then it has rebounded to about 152 tenge to the dollar.
This currency basket will give the Kazakh Central Bank more room to intervene in the markets to defend the value of its currency. It scrapped a managed corridor value for the tenge in March 2011.
Two years earlier, in February 2009 during the global financial crisis, the Kazakh Central Bank devalued the tenge by 21%.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
AUG. 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s Central Bank ditched its US dollar peg for the Kazakh tenge in favour of a currency basket. Central Bank chief Grigory Marchenko said the currency basket breakdown would be: 70% US dollar, 20% euro and 10% Russian rouble.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
AUG. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Germany arrested Akhat Alpysbayev, the Consul-General at Kazakhstan’s consulate in Frankfurt, and a more junior Kazakh diplomat for smuggling cigarettes into the country, German newspaper Bild reported. The arrests will embarrass Kazakhstan which has been professionalising its diplomatic service.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
AUG. 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Unknown assailants attacked and beat Igor Larra, a reporter who has written stories critical of government officials in the city of Aktobe, west Kazakhstan, the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said. The attack raises questions, again, of journalists’ safety in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 149, published on Aug. 26 2013)
AUG. 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Showing off its global sporting ambitions, Kazakhstan has registered Almaty with the International Olympic Committee as a potential candidate to host the 2022 Winter Games, AP reported. Almaty hosted the Asian Winter Games in 2011. It previously failed in a bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.
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(News report from Issue No. 149, published on Aug. 26 2013)
AUG. 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s Supreme Court sentenced six radical Islamists to up to 10 years in jail for plotting attacks against senior officials. Kazakhstan has been trying to quell a surge in attacks linked to radical Islamists over the past three years. Reports said the group plotted suicide attacks on major public buildings.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 148, published on Aug. 19 2013)
