NOV. 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Two workers died and 26 are still ill after they were poisoned while working at an oil services company in Zhanaozen, west Kazakhstan, media reported. The location of the poisoning is extra sensitive in Kazakhstan because Zhanaozen was the scene of anti-government rioting in 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 163, published on Dec. 4 2013)
DEC. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The world’s attention has focused on the massive street demonstrations against the Customs Union in Kiev but in Armenia another, far smaller, crowd has also been demonstrating against the Russia-led group. And this crowd of roughly 500 were within earshot of the visiting Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
The core of the debate is similar to the issues facing Ukraine. Faced with the option of moving closer to the EU or shifting towards Russia, Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan earlier this year chose the Kremlin. This surprised EU officials but unlike in Ukraine, the decision was generally welcomed in Armenia. Russia is seen as something of a security blanket for Armenia. It controls Armenia’s gas supplies and maintains a large military base in the country. It has also vowed to intervene if Azerbaijan threatens it.
Tigran Abrahamyan, a political scientist in Yerevan said the military aspect of the Customs Union was critical for Armenia. “Armenia will buy military equipment from Russia at a lower price and import it without paying customs fees,” he said.
Most Armenians are not anti-EU but they also understand the importance of military equipment and that is something that Russia’s army, and not the EU, can offer them.
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(News report from Issue No. 163, published on Dec. 4 2013)
NOV. 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A fire destroyed a large part of the Barakholka market, a scruffy site on the outskirts of Almaty where many poorer Kazakhs and migrants from China work. This is the third fire at Barakholka in the past couple of months. The Kazakh emergencies ministry has said it suspects arson.
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(News report from Issue No. 162, published on Nov. 27 2013)
NOV. 21 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Uzbekistan have ordered residents of Tashkent to use wood as fuel to combat energy shortages, Uzbek media reported. According to one website, the order has sent wood prices in Tashkent rocketing. People in Uzbekistan have been experiencing shortages of gas and electricity for months.
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(News report from Issue No. 162, published on Nov. 27 2013)
NOV. 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Hundreds of people in Armenia protested outside the PM’s office in Yerevan against a proposal for them to pay 5% to 10% of their salary into pension funds. Countries across the former Soviet Union are grappling with changing generous legacy pension systems.
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(News report from Issue No. 162, published on Nov. 27 2013)
NOV. 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A third of the population of Armenia live in poverty, a survey by the Armenian national statistics office said. Most alarming for policy makers was data that showed poverty levels in Armenia were the same in 2012 as in 2008. Armenia’s economy has been slow to recover from the 2008/9 global financial crisis.
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(News report from Issue No. 162, published on Nov. 27 2013)
NOV. 24 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Corruption has derailed a 195b tenge ($1.3b) government programme to bring drinking water to villages across Kazakhstan, media quoted Askhat Bekanov, a member of parliament, as saying. Mr Bekanov said in the Aktau region, for example, only six of the 300 villages that needed water system upgrades had received them.
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(News report from Issue No. 162, published on Nov. 27 2013)
NOV. 21 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s parliament passed a tax rise on alcohol and cigarettes which will balance prices with Russia and Belarus, its partners in the Customs Union, but could also anger ordinary people.
President Nursultan Nazarbayev voiced his approval for a law on so-called luxury goods in October during a party congress and also called for higher wealth taxes.
Besides higher taxes for large houses and powerful cars, the law specifically targets alcohol and cigarettes, which Mr Nazarbayev called “evil passions”.
The law will double the excise duties on strong alcoholic beverages in 2014, progressively reaching in 2016 a level of 1,600 tenge (about $10.50), more than three times the current value. On cigarettes, the increase will be 30% every year.
Russia has limited the amount of spirits that can be transported across the borders of the Customs Union in order to avoid price dumping. In Kazakhstan prices and excise taxes on alcohol and cigarettes had been lower than in Russia and Belarus. The new tax rises should change this.
Parliamentarians also justify the law because they said it would curb smoking and excessive drinking.
Other analysts, though, said increased prices could just push alcohol consumption underground and increase smuggling.
More tax increases for Kazakhstan’s wealthy are expected in the future. In the same speech in October that Mr Nazarbayev called for an increase in taxes on property, alcohol and cigarettes, he also called for a rise in income tax for the rich.
“Now when the wealthy class has expanded they can and should contribute towards social responsibility,” he said. “In our country a millionaire and a worker pay the same 10% income tax. We should think about it.”
Watch this space.
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(News report from Issue No. 162, published on Nov. 27 2013)
NOV. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Tajikistan have confiscated religious literature from Muslims, Protestants and Jehovah Witnesses this year, the Forum 18 news agency reported. It said that many of the people who carried the literature were fined for carrying banned religious texts.
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(News report from Issue No. 161, published on Nov. 20 2013)
NOV. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Around 100 protesters blocked a road in Samarkand, Uzbekistan’s second city, to protest against shortages of electricity and gas to their homes, media reported. Public protests are extremely rare in Uzbekistan, one of the most repressive countries in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)
