Tag Archives: Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan’s Kumtor gold output to drop

OCT. 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Canadian miner Centerra Gold said its operations at Kyrgyzstan’s Kumtor mine will produce up to 17% less gold in 2015 compared to 2014. The company forecasts production of 13.3 to 14.7 tonnes of gold this year. Last year, it produced 16.1 tonnes of gold. Kumtor is vital to Kyrgyzstan’s economy and news of a drop in output will hit the country’s economic forecasts. It accounts for around 10% of GDP.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)

Stock market: Nostrum, Tethys, KAZ Minerals

OCT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Oil companies suffered from a fall in oil prices this week. The Brent index closed at $48/barrel on Friday, down 5% this week.

Nostrum Oil & Gas lost around 9% this week, recovering on Friday to end at 475p per share in London. Nostrum’s summer objective Tethys Petroleum continued its slump, reaching the lowest level in 2015 on Oct. 22, trading at 0.06 Canadian dollars per share in Toronto on Thursday, rebounding slightly to 0.07 Canadian dollars on Friday. Kazakhstan-focused Roxi Petroleum gained 2%, after it issued new shares earlier in October. Roxi closed at 9.63p on Friday.

Last week, the price of copper fell by 2% before recovering to $2.40 per lb. Britain-based miner KAZ Minerals was hit by the market crunch this week and recorded a 7% loss, closing at 127p in London on Friday.

The upside was represented by Centerra Gold, whose shares gained almost 9% despite slower gold production in Kyrgyzstan. The final price in Toronto was 8.28 Canadian dollars.

In the banking sector, Bank of Georgia rose by almost 7% this week to 214p. The stability of the lari currency kept the market optimistic.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)

Kyrgyzstan’s housing market slows

OCT. 20 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s real estate market has slowed, media reported quoting a land registry report, more evidence that the overall Kyrgyz economy is stalling.

Analysts from the department of land registry said that the number of house sales this year had dropped by around 42% and the market for apartments was down by 34%.

The official position was the housing market had cooled off because prices were simply too high but a construction company in Bishkek said that the real reason activity in the housing market had fallen was the drop in the value of the Kyrgyz som against the US dollar.

“Sanctions on Russian economy definitely affect the purchasing power of our citizens because the US dollar is the currency for real estate transactions,” a construction company manager who wanted to remain anonymous told the Bulletin.

Roughly in line with other currencies in the region, the som has lost around 33% of its value over the past 12 months and is now trading at around 69/$1.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)

EX-Armenian PM Sargsyan heads Eurasian Union Commission

OCT. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Former Armenian PM Tigran Sargsyan will take over as chairman of the Eurasian Economic Commission on Feb. 1, an appointment that highlights Russian President Vladimir Putin’s influence over the group.

The Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) announced Mr Sargsyan’s appointment after a meeting in Astana. Mr Sargsyan succeeds Russian Viktor Khristenko.

According to media, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said of Mr Sargsyan’s appointment: “His candidacy is supported by the Russian President as they worked together some time ago.”

The Eurasian Economic Commission runs the EEU — which also includes Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as its members — on a day-to-day basis, and Mr Sargsyan’s appointment should, at first sight, give Armenia more influence over the trade bloc.

The reality is different, though. The EEU is a Russian project and Mr Lukashenko’s words show just how influential Mr Putin is over the group. Without his support, Mr Sargsyan could not have been appointed as chairman.

Since April 2014, Mr Sargsyan has been the Armenian ambassador to the United States. He had been PM between 2008-14 but quit abruptly after his government’s reforms to the state pension programme proved unpopular.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)

Kyrgyz electricity prices rise

OCT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Nurbek Elbayev, director of the Kyrgyz energy regulatory agency, said electricity tariffs will rise sharply over the next two years. The regulator will impose a 21% increase in August 2016 and a 29% rise in 2017. Electricity prices have risen across the region, triggering civil unrest.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)

Currency: Kazakh tenge, Georgian lari

OCT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Despite all the reassuring declarations coming from Astana and the Central Bank in Almaty, volatility will be a constant for the Kazakh currency over the next months. There is just no getting away from it.

On Wednesday, Kairat Kelimbetov, Kazakhstan’s Central Bank chief, said 277.5 tenge/ $1 is an acceptable rate as long as oil prices float around $50 per barrel. Already on Friday, Brent prices fell to $48 and the tenge followed to 278.2. Over the past fortnight it has lost 1.5% against the US dollar.

Other currencies fared better this week, maintaining their value. The Georgian lari was steady at 2.39/$1 and even the Kyrgyz som had a calm week below 69/$1.

Rumours of devaluation are more worrisome in Uzbekistan, where the sum is officially stable at around 2,663/$1, but the website dollaruz.com said informal rates on the Black Market are hitting over 5,700 sum/$1.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)

Japanese PM begins Grand Tour of Central Asia with stopover in Turkmenistan

OCT. 23 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Japanese PM Shinzo Abe began a tour of the five Central Asian Stans designed to boost links with the region.

The trip started in Turkmenistan, where Mr Abe signed deals worth over $18b in the chemical and power sectors.

This was the first official visit by a Japanese PM to Turkmenistan, proof of the country’s growing status as a global energy exporter.

Stopovers in Dushanbe and Bishkek will also mark the first official visits to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan for a Japanese leader.

Central Asia has been attracting high-profile interest from Asian leaders over the past few years. In 2013, China’s President Xi Jinping completed a similar Grand Tour of the region and this year Indian PM Narendra Modi also visited all five Stans.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)

SDK wins Kyrgyz election

OCT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan released official results for its Oct. 4 parliamentary election that cemented the Social Democrat’s (SDK) grip on power. The SDK, the party of President Almazbek Atambayev, won 38 seats, up from 26 in 2010. Second was Respublika-Ata Jurt with 28 seats. The Kyrgyzstan party won 18 seats, Onuugu- Progress 13 seats, Bir Bol 12 seats and Ata-Meken 11 seats.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)

Kyrgyzstan elections disappoints many

BISHKEK/Kyrgyzstan, OCT. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Parliamentary elections in Kyrygzstan on Oct. 4 may be being lauded around the world as a great success for democracy in a region normally more closely associated with dictatorship and the rule of the autocrat but in some circles the gloom is palpable.

And its many of Bishkek’s Western-oriented youth who are the most pessimistic. This was the group that rebelled most strongly against the edict that to register to vote you had to hand over your biometric data to the authorities.

Many decided that it was better to safeguard your personal data and lose the vote.

Sitting in a university canteen in Bishkek, a group discussed the election. None of them had voted and none of them regretted this.

“I do not regret that I did not go to elections because I knew who would win, it was the same people and parties as in the 2010 elections,” said 23-year old Syrgak Arkabayev, a student.

He also said that he would not submit his biometric data ahead of the 2016 presidential elections either.

And he’s not alone. An estimate said that up to a third of Kyrgyzstan’s population had also decided not to file their biometric data to the authorities. They said that the authorities can’t be trusted to safeguard the data.

But in any case, and this undermines the argument that democracy in Kyrgyzstan is in rude health, the dissenters said that there had been little motivation to vote in the election.

“I don’t think elections can change something in Kyrgyzstan,” said Gulzat Matisakova, 24.

Meerim Batyrkanova, 23, who helped an OSCE team to observe elections in Balykchy, a town on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul told a Bulletin correspondent that she was disappointed with the preliminary list of deputies who won seats at the election.

“Mostly, there are the same faces of deputies, ministers and state officials in the list,” she said. “There will be no big changes in politics.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)

Business comment: Bailing out savers

OCT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Banks in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are bracing themselves for tough times ahead. The currency crisis that has hit the region has, it feels, still a long way to run. Central Banks in both countries have pledged to help commercial banks in the short term to prevent falls in the values of the tenge and som from spiraling into panic and a run on the banks.

This is sensible.

The Kazakh Central Bank said it would compensate savings accounts in tenge that have so far lost 46% in US dollar terms after the regulator moved to a free-float policy. Across the border, in Bishkek, the Central Bank laid out new measures to help customers pay their dollar- denominated mortgages, which have become more expensive as the som lost value.

When people lose confidence in their currency, as is happening across Central Asia and the South

Caucasus, Central Banks intervene. In both countries, new policies were adopted to limit the amount of loans in foreign currencies, to ensure stability in the market.

These short-term measures, however, may have serious repercussions down the road. Bailouts can have an adverse effect on these countries’ sovereign ratings and they could, in any case, be insufficient to reverse the economic downturn.

Let’s see how these policies fair against a falling currency market.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)