JUNE 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Doctors and nurses will receive a 28% salary rise next year, media quoted health minister Salidat Kairbekova as saying. Medical workers have long complained that they are underpaid, especially since a 20% devaluation of the tenge this year. Nurses in Kazakhstan are currently paid $436/month; doctors $620/month.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
JUNE 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The thorny issue of pension reform returned to centre stage in Armenia after the new government submitted a proposal that watered down unpopular reforms.
Earlier this year Armenia’s government resigned over the unpopularity of its changes to the pension system which came into effect on Jan. 1. The new law stated that people born after 1973 pay 5% of their salaries into a government scheme, a sum matched by the government.
Thousands of people demonstrated against this plan and the Constitutional Court eventually deemed it illegal and demanded that the new law was amended by Sept. 30.
Armenia was effectively plunged into a political crisis — and the issue of how to reform the out-of-date pension system was still unresolved.
Now the new government of Hovik Abrahamyan is trying to tackle the problem.
It has proposed that the scheme would only be obligatory for public servants who will also have their salaries raised from July 1. It’s a brave proposal and one that may gain traction. Like other states across the former Soviet Union, Armenia needs to reform its overly-generous state pension scheme and also avoid major public discontent.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – So eager is Georgia to show off its impeccable NATO credentials that it has agreed to retain one battalion of roughly 700 soldiers in Afghanistan next year.
Irakli Alasania, Georgia’s defence minister, announced the news after meeting NATO officials in Europe. This will effectively halve Georgia’s commitments in Afghanistan. At its peak Georgia had over 1,600 soldiers in Afghanistan supporting NATO missions. Twenty-nine Georgian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.
The symbolism is all important. While most NATO member countries are rushing to extract their kit and soldiers from Afghanistan after a long, costly and frustrating campaign, Georgia has applied to remain with the final contingent of US forces.
Georgia is desperate to join NATO, partly as a bulwark against its former colonial overlord Russia with which it fought a brief war in 2008.
But NATO members are being cautious. Although they have shown support for Georgia’s NATO aspirations, and annual military exercises between Georgian and US forces started on June 9, they have also been wary of embracing it too warmly.
Both US President Barack Obama and Herman Chancellor Angela Merkel said that NATO would not offer Georgia membership at its annual conference in Cardiff in September.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
MAY 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia is considering dropping visa requirements for US citizens, media quoted deputy foreign minister Sergey Manasarian as saying. Earlier this year Armenia allowed EU citizens to stay 90 days without a visa after the EU relaxed rules for Armenians.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on June 4 2014)
MAY 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s parliament passed the first reading of a bill that will give a tax amnesty for people willing to repatriate cash held in offshore accounts.
The amnesty is designed to boost the size of the legal economy.
Ardak Tengebayev, deputy finance minister, said the plan would bring much needed cash into the Kazakh economy.
“We expect a turnover of 2 trillion tenge ($11b) and we hope that this sum will be reintroduced into the country’s economy,” he said
A similar amnesty in 2006-07 pulled in assets of $7b.
Not everybody, though, thought the amnesty was a good idea. Viktor Yambayev, chief of the Almaty Association of
Entrepreneurs, said the plan was designed to help only the country’s rich.
“This amnesty doesn’t affect the majority of the population. Instead, it benefits government employees, monopolist companies, extractive industries,” he told a Bulletin correspondent.
An amnesty may draw in some, much needed, cash into the Kazakh economy but another problem, the divide between the rich and poor, is intensifying.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
MAY 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh lawmakers have drafted a new bill which will impose a prison sentence of up to six years on anybody who fails to report information on attacks linked to terrorism, media reported. Critics of the bill say a new law could be abused by the security services.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
May 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian Orthodox groups rallied in Tbilisi against a new law designed to protect same-sex relationships. Media estimated that there were several hundred people at the rally, underlining the conservative nature of Georgian society. The Georgian Orthodox Church retains a lot of power in Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin)- In 2020, Kazakhstan will probably introduce a new pension scheme that will deduct 5% of an employee’s wages and automatically place it in a government plan, the labour ministry told the Tengrinews website.
Employers will match this employee contribution.
It appears that these planned reforms haven’t been announced more widely and loudly because of a very real fear of upsetting people.
The risk for Kazakhstan is fairly obvious. In Armenia a similar plan triggered widespread demonstrations. The problem is that Kazakhstan and other former Soviet States need to reform and update their pension schemes.
Last year, the Kazakh labour sacked its ministers because of backlash over trying to make women retire at the same age as men.
Persuading Kazakhs to accept the latest plan is also likely to be a serious challenge for the Kazakh government.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s upper house of parliament ratified a joint air defence agreement with Russia media reported. The deal further binds Russia and Kazakhstan’s militaries. Russia already had a similar deal in place with Belarus and has been working on a deal incorporating Armenia.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin)- Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atamabayev signed a law that will criminalise libel.Under the new law, the authorities in Kyrgyzstan can send people to prison for up to five years for libel. A statement by Mr Atamabayev’s office sad that the new law would not impact on freedom of speech.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
