MAY 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – As expected, parliament approved a law that will extend the time that citizens of most Western countries can stay in Georgia without a visa to 360 days from 90 days. Visa-free regulations were tightened in the summer.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek cinemas are showing a slickly made feature-length film which appears designed to project the government’s version of events in the town of Andijan 10 years ago when soldiers killed hundreds of people.
The 2-1/2 hour long film, called Sotqin and made by the government backed UzFilm studios, tells the story of two disenchanted brothers from a provincial town.
With the help of a foreign spy and agitators linked to Western non-governmental organisations they become increasingly religious and are persuaded to launch an attack on government buildings with a group of Islamic extremists.
Human rights groups have accused the Uzbek government of using the film, released in March, as a propaganda tool.
“It [the Uzbek government] wants to provide its own narrative — a quite strident, assertive narrative that Andijan for us is closed and any violence that was committed — or any harm that was done — was done by outsiders, not by us,” Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia programme director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, told the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Uzbekistan has always disputed the widely-accepted Western version of the Andijan killings of May 13 2005. It has said that 187 people died in Anijan and that most were armed Islamic extremists. Human rights groups said that the death toll was far higher and that those killed were unarmed civilians.
The killings in Andijan triggered an international outcry. Uzbekistan was seen as a pariah state and was shunned by the West. This changed, though, over the past few years because NATO has needed Uzbekistan to help it withdraw its military kit from Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh Central Bank has created a $700m fund to help people pay their mortgages, a move designed to ease Kazakhstan’s mountain of bad consumer debt.
Banks in Kazakhstan have one of the highest ratios of non-performing loans in the world, a legacy of the 2008/9financial crisis. Now, with a new financial crisis linked to the drop in global energy prices and a sharp fall in the performance of the Russian economy, also hitting Kazakhstan’s mortgage holders, policy makers have been looking for ways to ease the burden.
Low-income households are the principal target of the measure, according to official sources. Families at risk will be able to access new credit at advantageous rates, in order to pay off their outstanding bill.
Around 20,000 loans obtained between 2004 and 2009 should be affected by this measure. The largest contribution will go to Kazkommertsbank, which will receive $205m and refinance the debt of 12,500 borrowers.
The rationale is simple. Policymakers have argued that people taking out mortgages between 2004-9 were relatively uneducated in the practise and may have been mis-sold a product or taken out debt that they could not finance.
Most mortgages during this period were also taken out in US dollars. The
Kazakh tenge has dropped markedly against the US dollar since then, making the loans harder to service.
Some analysts, though, have questioned the spirit of the measure.
Quoted on Forbes.kz, financial analyst Murat Temirkhanov said: “The word ‘refinancing’ has little to do with this measure. It should be described as a restructuring, i.e. an exchange of bad loans for cheap money from the state.”
Still, the new measure has the potential to revive the financial market in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
TBILISI/GEORGIA, MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The second Saturday of May is an important date in Tbilisi’s calendar, as the New Wine Festival and its rivers of free wine kick off the capital’s summer party season.
But, although there were a record number of participants, this year’s festival was set against the backdrop of falling Georgian wine exports.
The 6th annual New Wine festival, organized by the Wine Club of Georgia, attracted thousands of visitors to sample 72 different types of local wine produced by more than 100 different companies and small family wineries.
“It is a great place to introduce people to different wines and to attract future customers,” Alex Rodzianko, an American who started his own winery in Georgia a couple of years ago and participated in the wine festival for the first time, said as he poured full glasses of amber wine to a circle of Georgians.
But life is less rosy for bigger companies, which target foreign markets. Last week the National Wine Agency released a report, which said that Georgian wine exports dropped by 58% in the first quarter of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014.
In total, in 2015 Georgia exported over 6m litres of wine worth $23m to 26 countries but the two biggest markets, Russia and Ukraine, reduced their Georgian wine consumption by 76% and 57% accordingly. Blame war in Ukraine and an economic recession in Russia.
Teliani Valley, one of the better-known Georgian winemakers, exports 80% of its produce. However their export sales are dwindling. Media representative Nutsa Avalishvili said that the company is now trying to expand into other countries such as Poland, Kazakhstan, China and the US to compensate for losses.
“The main reason for dropping sales in Ukraine is the political situation and crisis in that country,” she said.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – KT, the second largest South Korean mobile network, said that it had won a $110m contract to build an advanced electricity metering system. The project is in partnership with the Asian Development Bank. The plan is to install 1m metres in Uzbekistan’s three biggest cities by 2017.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an opinion poll for the National Democratic Institute in Georgia, only 24% of respondents said they would vote for the ruling Georgian Dream Coalition. The poll is another blow to the authority of the coalition.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s ministry of justice has drawn up a list of names that it wants to ban parents giving to their babies, media reported. The so-called black list appears to be an attempt to centralise names.
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)
APRIL 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Apparently worried about people defaulting on mortgage payments, the Kazakh Central Bank has set up a 130b tenge ($700m) fund. Kazakh media said the Central Bank will loan cash to commercial banks who will then help people who took out mortgages, possibly in dollars, between 2004 and 2009.
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)
MAY 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Salaries have risen by nearly 10% since the beginning of the year in Turkmenistan, official media reported quoting the Turkmen finance ministry.
This piece of data is important for two main reasons. Firstly, it is a rare piece of data from Turkmenistan’s government on prices and inflation. Secondly, it shows the probable impact of the devaluation by 30% of Turkmenistan’s manta currency on Jan. 1.
Turkmenistan, like other countries in the region, has been struggling to cope with the fall in global energy prices and the downturn in Russia’s economy that has slashed around 50% off the value of its rouble currency.
Both issues have pressured Central Asian economies and Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedobv ordered the Central Bank to cut the value of the manat for the first time in seven years.
Typically, currency devaluations in Central Asia have triggered inflation and, although not officially confirmed, this appears to be the case in Turkmenistan.
The Turkmen finance ministry said salaries had risen by 9.5% in the first three months of the year. It didn’t give any more information.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)
MAY 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The PEN American Center awarded its Freedom Award to imprisoned Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova. Ms Imayilova is in pre-trial detention for coaxing a fellow journalist into a suicide attempt. She is one of Azerbaijan’s most high- profile journalists.
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)
