DEC. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Manila-based Asian Development Bank approved a grant of $53.4m and an additional loan of $6.6m to Tajikistan to help it develop private businesses. The ADB said the grant was designed to bring in programmes that would reduce business costs as well as increase protection for small companies.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)
DEC. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s public utilities company Barqi Tojik said it had stopped exporting electricity to Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan because of a seasonal shortage of supply, showing the weakness of Tajikistan’s power generating infrastructure.
The decision to halt exports also poses major questions over Tajikistan’s plans to become a regional power exporter. Only last week, foreign ministers from the countries involved in the CASA-1000 project signed a final agreement in Istanbul which should power the project forward.
The CASA-1000 project will link Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan, which is short in power, via Afghanistan.
The export cut by Barqi Tojik is a routine measure to satisfy domestic demand during the peak winter season but the company said hydro-power plants suffered from lower- than-normal production this year.
“Water levels are today roughly 10% lower than last year,” said Barqi Tojik in a statement on Dec. 8.
For CASA-1000 to be a success, Tajikistan needs to build more hydropower capacity.
Shutting off power supplies to Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan during the winter months highlights this issue.
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(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)
DEC. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan once again formally complained to the OSCE, Europe’s security and democracy watchdog, about plans by Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to build new dams on the upstream river system
The complaint is a reminder of Uzbekistan’s opposition to hydro- power development in Central Asia’s upstream water system.
The Tajik and Kyrgyz governments see building new dams and hydro- power systems as essential for their countries’ development, and specific to meeting new power demands from Pakistan who they will serve through the CASA-1000 project. Uzbekistan sees the hydro- power systems as a threat to its cotton industry and agriculture.
CASA-1000 is the $1b World Bank- backed project for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to generate electricity to export to Pakistan, via Afghanistan. This project hinges on a series of new dams being built in Tajikistan, including the Rogun Dam on the Vakhsh River, part of the wider Amu Darya system.
Relations between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have become so strained in the past over the issue that at times it has threatened to destabilise the region.
With the final deal on CASA-1000 signed in Istanbul earlier this month, relations between Uzbekistan and its upstream neighbours are likely to become more strained, as this latest complaint appears to forewarn.
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(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)
DEC. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan and Uzbekistan plan to hold bilateral foreign ministry level talks in Dushanbe for the first time on Dec. 17/18, a step towards improving relations. Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have been locked in a row over water. Tajikistan wants to build what would be one of the world’s largest hyrdopower dams. Uzbekistan has complained that the dam will reduce water flow to its fields of cotton.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
NOV. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Tajikistan handed a 9-1⁄2 year prison sentence to an activist of the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) which, until September, had been the country’s only opposition party. Hasan Rahimov had been the IRPT chief in the southern Farkhor district. He is the first of two dozen IRPT activists to stand trial on various terrorism charges. The IRPT says the charges are politically motivated.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
DEC. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s somoni currency fell to its lowest ever level of 7/$1 just as the Central Bank was bringing in draconian new rules which will shut all independent exchange kiosks within two months.
So far this year, the somoni has lost 31% of its value. The Central Bank has previously admitted that it is on the verge of running out of money, having spent its reserves propping up its ailing currency.
The Central Bank issued a statement saying that the remaining 763 currency exchanges would be closed over the next few months and that people would only be allowed to make currency exchanges through the banks.
Ordinary Tajiks have seen this before. In April, the Central Bank issued a similar edict which closed half the exchange booths in the country. It didn’t stop the currency slide, though.
Between April and the end of November, the somoni fell from 5.8/$1 to 6.7/$1, a fall of 15.5%.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s parliament ratified a treaty that guaranteed investment protection for members of the defunct Eurasian Economic Community, a precursor of the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The treaty itself is of no significance but signing it does signify Tajikistan’s determination to join the EEU.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kyrgyz som continued its slump against the dollar and now trades at above 75.5/$1. The Central Bank chairman Tolkunbek Abdygulov said the exchange rate had changed because of a speculative attack and promised to continue to intervene to prop up the currency. The regulator said that local bank FinanceCredit was found guilty of speculative trading of the som. In addition, the Central Bank fined several exchange points across the country for speculating on currency rates.
In Tajikistan, the somoni was stable at 6.7/$1, after a rough week. On Nov. 30, media reported that Dushanbe residents had to pay around 7.5somoni for $1. The Central Bank reacted by drafting a decree that shut down the remaining private exchange bureaus in the country. Earlier in April, it had forced the closure of over 800 out of a total of 1,500 exchange bureaus because it said they were taking advantage of the unstable currency markets.
On Dec. 1, the Central Bank also reported the arrest of six employees of exchange bureaus for currency speculation. As with the Kyrgyz incidents, the details of these so-called speculative attacks have been difficult to pin down.
But none of this is surprising in Central Asia’s currency markets.
We witnessed a similar trend in Kazakhstan in 2014, when a devaluation of the tenge was followed by speculative attacks on the currency and interventions to keep the tenge from plummeting. This was repeated this year again in Kazakhstan.
It is likely that both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan will follow this trend and crack down on private exchange bureaus to strengthen their control over exchange rates.
In much of the rest of the region, currencies did not move. The exception was Uzbekistan. The Uzbek sum reached a new record trading low, officially, at 2,755/$1. In the last year, it lost almost 15% of its value.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
NOV. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Tajikistan sent two Kyrgyz men to Kyrgyzstan for allegedly trying to recruit people to join the radical IS group in Syria and Iraq, media reported. Central Asian governments are worried about an increase in IS recruiting in the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Russian branch of French retailer Auchan said it would import goods from Tajikistan, Morocco and China to make up for the decline in imports from Turkey, which will be subjected to an import ban imposed by Russia after a Turkish plane shot down a Russian fighter-jet over Syria. Auchan will open a supermarket in Dushanbe in 2016. Auchan already operates a Russia-Tajikistan distribution line.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
