Tag Archives: Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan endures Manas airport funding headache

SEPT. 21 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — When the US military quit its airbase outside Bishkek in July 2014, ambitious officials dreamt of turning Manas airport in a Central Asian transport hub that would connect Europe and South-East Asia.

A year on and this dream is still very much that. There have been no major investments.

In an interview with the Bulletin at his office in central Bishkek, Nursultan Belekov, the 24-year-old deputy head of Manas Airport’s investment department, explained his frustration.

“We have worked hard to attract Russian, Turkish and Chinese partners, but no one has contributed yet,” he said.

Earlier this year Rosneft rowed back on an earlier promise to invest in the airport, perhaps making Manas a victim of a sharp economic downturn hitting the region.

Mr Belekov, who is standing for parliament in October’s election, had a different spin on Rosneft’s pull out from Manas.

“They offered to invest $1b dollars, but we were needed to refuse because Manas airport is a strategic object for Kyrgyzstan’s independence, and a 51% stake cannot go to a foreign company,” he said. Manas needs around $1.2b investment.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Biometric data enables Kyrgyz people to vote

SEPT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Most Kyrgyz migrant workers will not be able vote in the parliamentary election because they have failed to submit biometric data to the authorities before the deadline. The Zamandash opposition party told RFE/RL that only around 10,000 out of 700,000 Kyrgyz living in Russia will vote in the Oct. 4 election.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Kyrgyzstan focuses on agriculture

SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Agricultural projects outnumbered any other sector for applications to a $1b Russian-Kyrgyz development fund for small and medium enterprises in Kyrgyzstan. The data highlights Kyrgyzstan’s predominantly agricultural economy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Comment: This election is a poor advert for democracy in Kyrgyzstan

SEPT. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Fourteen parties will appear on the ballot for voters in Kyrgyzstan to elect from on Oct. 4, yet from social media to taxi chatter, the complaint is of a lack of genuine choice. The menu contains the familiar set of several dozen politicians, from several parties that sound all too similar.

What the complainers ask for may be too much, one might say. The uninspiring choice may actually be the only thing that contemporary democracy can offer. Politicians seek reelection, parties try to cater to as wide a spectrum of voters as possible, and none of them accept the risks involved in running on sharply defined and innovative policy platforms.

But wait. Even by the modest standards of latter-day democracy, Kyrgyzstan may be scoring too low.

That 75% of sitting deputies are seeking reelection may be normal, but it cannot be normal when an enormous number of them are on tickets of new parties, often very different from their original parties.

There is a tendency in Kyrgyz politics for the protagonists to swap parties regularly and for new parties to emerge, confusing the electorate and cementing the feeling that the election is more about personalities than policies and issues.

None of the parties has seriously criticised President Almazbek Atambayev. No party is anything close to pro-Western or critical of Kyrgyzstan’s over-reliance on Russia. All are happy about the Eurasian Economic Union.

All are anti-corruption, pro- government-efficiency, pro- national-unity and a list of other goods, with no detail on how to attain them.

In an election which, thus, seems to be all about personalities, all the main parties are parading decidedly mixed lists of candidates. Popular politicians next to infamous ex- officials; progressives next to conservatives; wealthy business owners next to underpaid teachers; law enforcement leaders next to those with criminal past; young candidates next to old.

Thus, the voters are facing a long ballot with little variety and more than a bit of confusion.

Lacking genuine choice, they are left to vote either for the President’s Social Democratic party, to keep things the same, or for a party linked to their clan or family.

These growing pains – if this is what they can be called – are not good signals for a more democratic Kyrgyzstan.

By Emil Dzhuraev, Lecturer in politics at the American University of Central Asia, Bishkek

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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Currency: Kazakh tenge, Kyrgyz som

SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Have the Kazakh tenge and the Kyrgyz som reached rock bottom yet? This week, the tenge in Kazakhstan suffered another strong fall (-4.4%). The cost of $1 even rose above the psychological rate of 300 tenge on Sept. 16, only to settle back down to around 270 by the end of the week.

The Kyrgyz som also hit a historical high of 70/$1 on Wednesday.

And this despite repeated interventions from both Central Banks, which bought hundreds of millions of dollars in the currency market to support the tenge and som.

At the end of last week, the announcement that Dariga Nazarbayeva, the eldest daughter of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, had been appointed as deputy PM sparked a late round of trade in the dollar market, weakening the tenge. Was this the market saying that they were worried about her promotion? Some analysts said that President Nazarbayev may be grooming her to take over the top job.

The som is struggling because the Russian economy isn’t recovering and the upcoming parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan are upset- ting the market.

In Georgia, the lari lost 2.4%, probably linked to general Emerging Markets weakness.

The Fed hasn’t ruled out the possibility of increasing rates by the end of the year. Such a decision would divert US dollars back to the US economy, away from Emerging Markets. The faltering economies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus need to prepare themselves for the worst.

Tightly-managed currencies in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan remained vir- tually unchanged this week. To maintain the exchange rates constant, central bankers in these countries had to heavily intervene in the currency markets.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Stock market: Centerra Gold, KAZ Minerals

SEPT. 11-18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Canadian mining company Centerra Gold saw its stock price on the Toronto Stock Exchange jump over 16% to 7.34 Canadian dollars, after having slumped in the past three weeks, due to the signing of a new exploration licence in British Columbia. Centerra’s main asset, the Kumtor gold mine, is located in Kyrgyzstan. London listed KAZ Minerals, was down 6% to 152 pence due to low copper prices. Kazakhstan-focused Roxi Petroleum gained 4.4% this week, to 8.75 pence.

Kcell, one of Kazakhstan’s largest telecoms, lost 2% on Sept. 17 after its mother company TeliaSonera said it would leave Eurasian markets.

London-listed Bank of Georgia surged 3.9% this week to 1,907 pence. The GDR stock of Georgia’s TBC Bank lost 6.5% this week in London, down to $9.25 per share, though it had fallen to $9.11 on Sept. 14.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Kyrgyz som slips to new low

SEPT. 16 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s som dropped to its lowest level against the US dollar since independence, forcing the Central Bank to step in to brake its fall.

At exchange kiosks in Bishkek, the som traded at 72/$1 before recovering to around 69/$1 after the Central Bank’s intervention. Still, the fall in the som, now down 13% in the past month, has pushed up inflation and worried people.

“Food is getting more expensive, it definitely reflects on the family budget,” a 52-year-old man who declined to be named said as he left a supermarket in central Bishkek.

When the Kyrgyz government pushed the country into the Russia- led Eurasian Economic Union last month it said food prices would fall.

Emil Umetaliev, a Bishkek-based analyst, said this promise has been shown to be empty. “How can they be cheaper if in Russia they are getting more expensive because of an internal crisis?” he said.

To stop the slide, the Central Bank bought $18m worth of som but a source at the Bank told the Bulletin officials were anxious.

“The Bank made intervention but it did not particularly affect such a fast growth of dollar,” she said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Kyrgyzstan accuses PM

SEPT. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s First Deputy PM Tayirbek Sarpashev accused some political parties of hampering the Oct. 4 parliamentary election by trying to illegally collect voters’ biometric data. Mr Sarpashev did not name the parties.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Kyrgyz bank to issue debt

SEPT. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kyrgyz Investment and Credit Bank (KICB), a popular lender in Kyrgyzstan, said it wants to issue debt worth 200m som ($2.9m), its largest ever issue. “The total amount of outstanding debt securities issued by the bank has reached 450m som, about 1% of the total volume of the bank’s liabilities,” Aliyev Bektur Kubanychbekovich, KICB deputy chairman, told local media.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Kyrgyzstan should diversify assets

SEPT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz should diversify their assets, including cash, to protect themselves from the sharp swings in the value of currencies and commodities, Raushan Seitkazimova, head of the Central Bank’s monetary control unit, told media. The value of the Kyrgyz som has been fluctuating wildly, over the past few months.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)