MAY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Kyrgyz court sentenced Altynbek Muraliyev, son of former PM Amangeldi Muraliyev, to 12 years in prison for treason and espionage. Muraliyev was arrested in November 2014, while attempting to leave Kyrgyzstan. The National Security Service said he had given classified information to foreign governments.
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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz legislators proposed a new bill to restrict foreign media funding into the country, a law that could further undermine Kyrgyzstan’s shaky freedom of expression record. The new law would ban foreigners from setting up media organisations in the country and restrict foreign funding to 20% of an organisation’s total revenue. Media lobby groups have said that this law will serve only to restrict media and reduce free speech.
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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Border authorities in Turkey detained dozens of ethnic Uyghurs who were trying to fly to Northern Cyprus with forged Kyrgyz passports. Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group predominantly from the west China region of Xinjiang, neighbouring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. They have said that they are being persecuted by Chinese officials.
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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz telecoms operator Sky Mobile said it has introduced 4G technology across Kyrgyzstan. Sky Mobile, which operates under the Beeline brand, is Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest mobile operator. In September last year, Kyrgyzstan rolled out 4G frequencies. Sky Mobile is a subsidiary of Russia-based and New York-listed Vimpelcom. In its quarterly results this month, it said that Kyrgyz were spending more on their mobiles.
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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
BISHKEK, MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan became the 77th country to feature in Google Street View, and the first in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, highlighting its relative openness and potentially giving its tourist sector a boost.
Tilek Mamutov, Google’s representative in Kyrgyzstan, said in a Facebook post that the new service will give people around the world the chance to make a virtual road-trip across Kyrgyzstan.
“Now users of Google Maps all over the world can take virtual trips along Kyrgyz roads and discover tourist attractions online,” he said.
Google Street View integrates with the California-based company’s mapping service to allow users to navigate their way though cities at street level with static images.
Mr Mamutov said it took around 1-1/2 years for Google to photograph virtually every road in Kyrgyzstan.
A similar programme was rolled out in some cities in Kazakhstan by Yandex, the Russian search engine, but there is no timeline yet for Google to capture each and every corner of the country.
Google Street View has been criticised for impinging on people’s privacy.
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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev appointed Abdikarim Alimbayev as the new chairman of the State Border Service. His predecessor, Raimberdi Duyshenbiyev, was appointed Chief of Staff. The Border Service is an important office in Kyrgyzstan. Unresolved border disputes with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have triggered clashes in the past months.
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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s Statistics Committee said that revenues from exports fell by 25.8% to $287.1m in Q1 2016, compared to the same period last year. Notably, revenues from gold exports shrank by 2.6 times. Centerra Gold, the Canadian company exploiting the Kumtor gold mine, had said that delays in shipments had hit sales. Kumtor is Kyrgyzstan’s largest asset.
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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Just days after Western human rights lobby groups had cheered Kyrgyzstan for dropping a draconian draft law that would have hindered NGO activity in the country and cut their funding, Kyrgyz MPs reminded the world that they are still ready to restrict freedoms.
Lawmakers said they dropped the NGO law because it would have harmed the economy, since many NGOs in Kyrgyzstan play the role of partner, or even substitute for the state in poverty reduction, social services and other issues.
Now, though, they will vote on a new bill put forward that bans foreigners from setting up media organisations in the country, or from funding more than 20% of their budget.
This will have repercussions for established news outlets, like AKIpress, KyrTAG, US-funded RFE/RL and Russia’s Sputnik.
This new law could profoundly change Kyrgyzstan’s media environment and, possibly, undermine its freedom. Kyrgyz MPs should do the right thing again and vote it down.
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(Editorial from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – These are tough times for corporate governance and the general business climate in Central Asia.
In rapid succession, news of a raid at a gold company in Kyrgyzstan, the seizure of a Kazakh refinery in Romania, an allegedly fraudulent scheme to fake sales of Uzbek cars and the freezing of a murky hotel sale linked to two exiled Kazakhs in New York came to our readers’ attention over the past two weeks.
Since the raid at its subsidiary’s office in Bishkek, Centerra Gold has reiterated its readiness to cooperate with the authorities and the government to negotiate a solution. We think the raid was a way for the government to flex its muscles.
A bizarre scheme to fake car sales from Uzbekistan to Russia was unearthed this month, perhaps reminding us of how two plus two is not always equal to four in Central Asia. Undoubtedly, the current economic crisis has sparked more corruption.
The seizure of KMG Romanian refinery allows us to look back into the murky deal that first brought Kazakh state-owned business into Romania. Authorities didn’t seem impressed with acrobatic financial manoeuvres performed by former managers at Rompetrol. They’re now seeking damages and a court sentence might negatively affect China’s CEFC, which just bought into the venture.
Lastly, it’s not a surprise that a US court froze the sale of a hotel owned by Mukhtar Ablyazov and Viktor Khrapunov, two Kazakh businessmen and arch-rivals of President Nursultan Nazarbayev. They seemed to be needing some cash but their involvement in court cases in Kazakhstan, the US and Europe turns their transactions into red flags.
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
ALMATY, MAY 12 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) – Revenues at Russian mobile operator VimpelCom’s Central Asia and the South Caucasus operations were sharply down in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015, a sign of the continuing economic malaise that has undermined consumer confidence in the region.
In Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, VimpelCom operates under the Beeline brand. Its customer base in the region shrank by 6% to just above 24m, roughly in line with figures released last month by its rival TeliaSonera.
In Kazakhstan, VimpelCom said that revenue from its mobile operations was just under 24b tenge in Q1, 10% lower than 2015, and that its subscriber base had fallen 4% to 9.2m.
The Kazakh mobile market has become increasingly competitive. Sweden’s Tele2 merged with Kazakhstan’s Altel earlier this year and has been undercutting its bigger rivals.
In its quarterly report, VimpelCom said that prices would stay low.
“Competition remains intense, however, although the company continues to maintain its commercially rational pricing strategy,” it said. “Beeline expects the competitive environment to remain challenging throughout 2016.”
And, other than in Uzbekistan were a new pricing strategy had sustained revenues, it was a similar story in other subsidiaries. In Georgia revenues were down 30% in US dollar terms and in Tajikistan down 27%.
VimpelCom said of the drop in revenue in Tajikistan that this was “mainly due to lower incoming international traffic as a result of fewer migrants living abroad due to the macro-economic slowdown in the region and a weakening local currency.”
A recession in Russia has heavily reduced job opportunities for migrant workers from Tajikistan, hitting remittances and economies in Central Asia.
Earlier this year, VimpelCom paid a fine of $795m after it admitted paying bribes in 2007/8 to access the Uzbek mobile market.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
