SEPT. 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov opened the largest hotel in the resort town of Avaza, on the Caspian Sea coast, local media reported. Shaped like a cruise ship, the new five-star hotel cost over $100m to build. The new hotel represents just the latest symbol of Mr Berdymukhamedov’s cult of personality in Turkmenistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 296, published on Sept. 16 2016)
ALMATY, SEPT. 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s government adopted a new programme to improve access to housing, in an effort to curb protests against proposed land reforms that swept the country earlier this year.
The new programme, called Nurly Zher (‘Bright Land’), will, it is planned, put into action plans laid out in 2003 to give 1,000 square metres of land to every Kazakh citizen.
Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev told ministers at a government meeting that without infrastructure, the land parcels would be useless to people.
“We told people we would give them 1,000 square metres to build houses. Now people demand this land. But across our vast steppe there are no roads, electricity, water and heat infrastructure,” Mr Nazarbayev said.
Kazakhstan is the ninth biggest country in the world but has a population of just 17m people.
The Nurly Zher programme will spend $71m building infrastructure — roads, water, electricity — to try and attract development.
It has also said that it will subsidise the building of new housing by up to 30% and ensure that banks give cheap loans out to developers.
But it also drew criticism from people who said that Mr Nazarbayev had diluted the original plan.
“Through this program we will finally have infrastructure for lands. However, people will now be forced to buy houses with mortgages despite the fact that the land is free,” said Daniyar Kankozha, an IT worker.
Land reform and housing are sensitive issues in Kazakhstan. Earlier this year, protests spread around the country after plans were unveiled that would have given foreigners
more rights to own land.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 296, published on Sept. 16 2016)
SEPT. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The International Tennis Federation banned for life two Uzbek officials for betting offences. The two officials, Sherzod Hasanov and Arkhip Molotyagin,communicated via mobile phone the scores of games they were officiating to a third party, before recording them into the official electronic score- board, allowing illegal betting.
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(News report from Issue No. 296, published on Sept. 16 2016)
SEPT. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Georgia in the first half of 2016 grew by 10% compared to the same period last year. In Q2, FDI declined by 3.8% to $445m. Azerbaijan, Britain and the Czech Republic were the three largest investors in Georgia in Q2. FDI in the transport and communications sector made up more than a third of the total inflow.
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(News report from Issue No. 295, published on Sept. 9 2016)
SEPT. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The military court in Astana started the trial of Kazakh businessmanTokhtar Tuleshov, arrested in January on charges of plotting to overthrow the government. Tuleshov, who owns a beer factory in the southern city of Shymkent, was said to be behind the protests against the land reform in Kazakhstan, which mushroomed in several Kazakh cities in the spring.
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(News report from Issue No. 296, published on Sept. 16 2016)
BISHKEK, AUG. 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human rights activists and Western analysts have lauded the death of Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s only post-Soviet leader and a man they detest for his cruel human rights abuses, but many ordinary Uzbeks are more worried about the potential instability that could follow.
A Conway Bulletin correspondent in Bishkek spoke to people in Uzbekistan who all said that Karimov’s death this week from a stroke was a worrying moment for the country.
Murodjan, a 26-year-old businessman who lives in the southern Uzbek city of Gulistan, said Karimov had done a lot for Uzbekistan.
“Any young politician who comes after him will struggle to maintain stability,” he told the Bulletin.
During his 25-year reign, Mr Karimov often talked up the dangers posed by Islamic radicals. His opponents said that he played the security card too strongly and that it was simply an excuse to crackdown on dissidents. They said that massive human rights abuses showed what a tyrant he was.
And yet the West appreciated the stability Mr Karimov was able to impose, using Uzbekistan as a key transit route for sending military kit into and out of neighbouring Afghanistan during NATO’s war against the Taliban.
Abror, 24, who lives in Tahskent, told the Bulletin before confirmation of Karimov’s death that he hoped the news was wrong.
“The authorities informed us that his health state is stable, I really hope this is the case,” he said.
He will be disappointed.
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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)
ALMATY, SEPT. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — South Korea’s Samsung pulled out of a $2.5b deal with Kazakhstan to build a coal-fired power plant on the shores of Lake Balkhash in the south of the country because of the low oil prices.
A collapse in oil prices since 2014 has hit Kazakhstan’s finances hard, forcing the government to cancel projects. Although there has been no response from the Kazakh government, the inference from Samsung’s statement is that it was worried that Kazakhstan would not be able to buy as much electricity as they had agreed.
“Samsung C&T exercised the put option regarding all of its Balkhash thermal power plant shares, 50% plus one share,” the company said in a statement. “[This] is a demand for Samruk Energy to acquire all the shares within 60 days from the date of notice for $192.5m.”
Samsung stopped construction work on the power plant 12 months ago after a disagreement with the Kazakh government over the agreed price it would pay for buying electricity from the plant, the first indicator that the deal may be running into serious trouble.
For Kazakhstan, Samsung’s decision to cancel the contract is a blow for two reasons — it is damaging for Kazakhstan’s reputation as a place to do business and also places further pressure on its current Soviet-era energy production system. Demand for electricity has been booming because of rising population and living standards. The Balkhash power plant had been considered essential for maintaining Kazakhstan’s power production.
In January, another South Korean company, LG Chem, dropped its plans to build a $4.2b petrochemical complex in Kazakhstan due to sustained low oil prices.
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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)
SEPT. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved a $240m loan to help Kazakhstan improve a 185-km highway around its northern Caspian Sea shore to Russia. The road is important to link Kazakhstan to Russia and the South Caucasus via land, giving it further access to European markets. The ADB said the road improvements will open up new trade and investment opportunities.
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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)
AUG. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Archaeologists from the University of Karaganda, central Kazakhstan, said that they had discovered the remains of a pyramid used as a mausoleum for an ancient king or clan leader which may be 3,000 years old, media reported. If confirmed, the pyramid would be older than some Egyptian pyramids.
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(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)
AUG. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — At the Olympics in Rio, Uzbekistan won four gold medals, including three in boxing. Kazakhstan once again pulled in a decent haul, winning three golds, including a first ever swimming win, five silvers and nine bronzes. Tajikistan also won its first gold medal since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Dilshod Nazarov won gold in the hammer, becoming an instant national hero in Tajikistan. In the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan won a gold medal in taekwondo, Georgia won golds in wrestling and weightlifting and Armenia won a wrestling gold, its first for 20 years.
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(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)
