Tag Archives: Kazakhstan

McDonald’s finally opens in Kazakh city

ALMATY, JUNE 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — To much excitement, and a little controversy, McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s biggest city.

This is the second McDonald’s in Kazakhstan after a restaurant it opened in Astana in March.

At the opening on the site of an old cinema which heritage activists had campaigned to try and protect, Kairat Boranbayev, owner of the McDonald’s franchise in Kazakhstan and Belarus, said that the company aimed to build a total of 15 stores in Almaty and 10 in Astana.

The long-awaited opening of the McDonald’s restaurants has been one of the few positives for President Nursultan Nazarbayev this year, marked by a sharp drop in Kazakhstan’s economic outlook because of a recession in Russia and a fall in oil prices. Ordinary Kazakhs have seen inflation rise, jobs disappear and tenge savings wiped out.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

Polymetal gets loan for its Kazakh project

JUNE 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian miner Polymetal said it reached an agreement with Sberbank for a $350m loan to finance the start-up of its Kyzyl project in north-eastern Kazakhstan. In 2015, it bought the Kyzyl project for $620m from Sumeru, a private group owned by Timur Kulibayev, son-in-law of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

Violence towards Kazakh TV star sparks debate on violence against women

ALMATY, JUNE 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Bayan Yessentayeva, a high profile TV celebrity and a role- model for thousands of Kazakh women, was beaten unconscious by her husband during a row at a petrol station, sparking a rare public debate about domestic violence in Kazakhstan.

Eyewitnesses said that Bakhytbek Yessentayev was drunk when he stabbed, punched and kicked Ms Yessentayeva, 42. Mr Yessentayev has a reputation for violence. Earlier this year, a video was posted on Youtube which allegedly showed him punch- ing staff at a casino after he lost thousands of dollars in one evening.

A spokesman for the Talgar hospital near Almaty said that Ms Yessentayeva was unconscious but in a stable condition.

“She’s a very strong woman to be able to survive, especially with such injuries. She has a strong spirit,” said Erbol Sarsenbayev, deputy director of the hospital.

For Kazakhs the beating has generated a rare, and uncomfortable, debate about domestic abuse.

According to the United Nations, 500 women are killed each year by their husbands or boyfriends in Kazakhstan, one of the highest rates per capita in the world.

Campaigners have said that in Kazakhstan a mix of heavy drinking, a distrust of the authorities and Islamic practices which can subjugate women in the home combine to create conditions which heighten scenarios where domestic abuse can occur.

The beating of Ms Yessentayeva, though, triggered a rare protest against domestic violence with women posting photos of their faces on Twitter with painted-on bruises.

Zulfiya Baisakova, chairperson of the activist group Union of Crisis Centers in Kazakhstan, said they receive between 15,000 to 20,000 reports of domestic violence each year.

“Official statistics show that everything is improving but unofficially statistics show an increase in the number of incidences,” she said.

And women in Kazakhstan are frustrated by the lack of attention that domestic abuse receives.

Diana Burkit, a student from south Kazakhstan, told the Conway Bulletin that although she was not a victim of abuse her relatives had been.

“I resent that only after Yessentayeva was abused has anybody paid attention to this. How about what goes on in Shymkent?” she said.

She described domestic violence in southern Kazakhstan as rampant.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

WB approves Kazakhstan road loan

JUNE 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The World Bank approved a $978m loan to finance the construction of a road link across Kazakhstan, which will complete the transit corridor between Astana and the west of the country. The project will cost a total of $1b and will be partly funded by the government. The World Bank is also funding part of the Kazakh section of the Western Europe – Western China highway.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

EEU plans single electricity market, say energy ministers after meeting in Tajikistan

JUNE 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Eurasian Economic Union, a trade bloc led by Russia but also involving Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia plans to set up a unified electricity market by 2019, EEU members’ energy ministers said after a meeting in Dushanbe. Tajikistan aspires to be part of the EEU, which critics have said is a Kremlin project to extend its control.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

Kazakhstan begins constructing Shymkent city

JUNE 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s government said it has started construction work at Shymkent City, a new urban development outside Shymkent, in the south of the country. The government will share costs with local investors and plans to deliver the project in 2020. Shymkent is Kazakhstan’s third-largest city. The government wants to stimulate the economy through major building schemes.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

Kazakh oil revenues fall

JUNE 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh officials said production of oil and gas makes up around 17% of the country’s GDP, a proportion eight percentage points lower than in 2015. The fall in oil prices has impacted both feasibility and profitability at Kazakhstan’s oil and gas fields. This is an important measure of the impact of the drop in oil price on Kazakhstan’s economy.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

Stock market: Tethys, Nostrum

JUNE 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Central Asia and South Caucasus-linked stocks fell this week, driven down by lower oil prices. As shown in the table, Tethys and Nostrum shares dropped significantly over the past week after a rather stable month.

Roxi, on the other hand, moved against the tide, gaining 15.3% in one week.

On June 14, the company’s non-executive director Edmund Limerick purchased 500,000 shares at 9.8p/share, for a total of £49,000. Mr Limerick and his wife now own 1.15m shares, or 0.12% of the company, up from 0.07% before the purchase.

The deal pushed up the share price, giving it a boost after weeks of downward pressure.

Kuat Oraziman, CEO, and Kairat Satylganov,CFO and director, own Roxi, which operates in Western Kazakhstan, not far from the massive Tengiz oilfield.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

Business comment: Gold in Central Asia

JUNE 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Gold prices climbing up towards $1,300/ounce, but not everyone in the mining sector in Central Asia is happy.

In Kazakhstan, Russian miner Polymetal received a much-needed lifeline from Sberbank to push forward with its Kyzyl project in north-eastern Kazakhstan. The gold sector in Kazakhstan is enjoying a positive season, as production numbers in the country are up 3.7% to 13 tonnes of fine gold in the first five months of the year, compared to Jan.-May 2015.

The steady growth is paired with increased investment, as Polymetal is focusing its growth outside Russia on Kazakhstan and Armenia.

But this year has not brought only good news in Kazakhstan. In March, Alhambra Resources said it was seeking damages against Kazakhstan’s government, via the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, for the bankruptcy of its Kazakh subsidiary.

Recovering commodity prices, however, can do little to improve the mood in Kyrgyzstan, where Centerra Gold and the government are increasingly entangled in what could become a decisive legal battle.

Centerra sought the resolution of the continuous fines and corruption probes at the Stockholm court of arbitration.

The Kyrgyz government responded with more fines and charged a former director of Kyrgyzaltyn — which owns a stake in Centerra — of taking bribes from the Canadian miner.

These charges, fuelled by allegations from a former Centerra director, would make the Canadian company guilty of paying bribes, serving an order to the government, which is trying hard to show Centerra under a bad light.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

Kazakh airline to prepare an IPO

JUNE 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Peter Foster, CEO of Kazakhstan’s flagship airline Air Astana, said the company will seek financial advisors this autumn to prepare an IPO in 2018. Mr Foster said that the company will list in Kazakhstan and in other more liquid markets, such as London or Singapore. Britain’s BAE Systems owns 49% of Air Astana, Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna owns 51%.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)