APRIL 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In an interview with the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Tajik interior ministry spokesman said that interior minister, Ramazon Rahminzoda, had ordered policemen to go to the theatre at least once a month. He said that the theatre could inspire, challenge and educate policemen. Tajik police have a reputation for being corrupt.
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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)
APRIL 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon officially signed a decree appointing his 29-year-old son, Rustam Emomali, as the mayor of Dushanbe. Mr Emomali had been acting mayor of Dushanbe since January when the previous long- serving incumbent was suddenly fired. He had to wait until he had been elected to the city assembly before he could take up the position on a full-time basis. He was elected to the assembly at the end of last month. Some analysts have said that Mr Emomali’s promotion is part of the grooming he is undergoing ahead of taking over from his father as president.
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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)
APRIL 2 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The son of Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon, Rustam Emomali, was officially voted in as a deputy in Dushanbe’s city assembly. The vote allows Mr Emomali to take over as mayor of Dushanbe, a move that marks yet another shift rise for a man analysts have said is being groomed to take over the top job from his father. In January, Mr Rakhmon appointed his son to be the acting mayor of Dushanbe, but he could only become the permanent mayor after he had been elected to the city’s assembly. He had previously been head of the government’s anti-corruption unit and head of Tajikistan’s football federation.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
MARCH 29 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A lawyer working on a human rights case in Tajikistan has fled the country fearing for her safety, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported, just the latest in a series of anti- government activists who have moved into self-imposed exile. RFE/RL said that they had spoken to Muazzama Qodirova who was now in Germany where she hoped to apply for asylum. She had been working on defending jailed human rights lawyer, Buzurgmehr Yorov. Free speech and human rights groups have complained of the Tajik government’s increasingly dictatorial approach to governing.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
APRIL 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tethys, the embattled London- listed oil producer with interests in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Georgia, said that its revenues from oil and gas sales had fallen by 47% in 2016 to $11.7m. It said that the drop was due to a fall in production and a devaluation of the tenge in the second half of 2015. Tethys sells most of its oil in Kazakhstan’s domestic market.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
APRIL 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s somoni currency keeps on hitting all-time lows. The Central Bank has managed a fall in its value since 2014 that has seen its worth half to 8.23/$1. At the start of 2014, the somoni was valued at 4.77/$1.
But, the rate of the fall may actually be good news. In July last year the Central Bank published a gloomy assessment of the somoni’s outlook. It said that the somoni would fall by 21% in 2017 and by another 8% in 2018. Of course there is some way to go, but in the first three months of the year the Tajik somoni has fallen just over 4%. This means that if the current fate of depreciation is maintain, the somoni will come in slightly better than expected.
Like the rest of the region, Tajikistan’s economy has been hit hard by the recession in Russia, it is officially the most remittance- dependent country in the world and most of this comes from Russia. The EBRD and the ADB have offered to help Tajikistan but require reforms.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
DUSHANBE, MARCH 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Telia, the Swedish telecoms company, accused Tajikistan’s government of effectively blocking the $39m sale of mobile unit Tcell to the Aga Khan, an accusation that will undermine Western business confidence in the country.
The Tajik government’s anti- monopoly agency failed to respond to a request to approve the Tcell deal before a deadline set by Telia, forcing it to void the sale of its 60% stake in the company to the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED).
In a statement, Emil Nilsson, head of the Eurasia region for Telia, said that the company had now written off the value of Tcell’s assets, which it put at $13m, although it was still looking for an alternative buyer.
“We have taken all relevant actions in trying to close the deal. The proposed buyer of our interest in Tcell, AKFED, is an established investor in the region with multiple companies in its current portfolio and a long history in Tcell,” he said. “We are now assessing alternative ownership solutions for Tcell.”
Neither the Tajik government nor the Aga Khan have commented.
Telia has been looking to sell its units in Central Asia and the South Caucasus after a corruption probe in 2012/3 discovered it had paid a bribe of several hundred million dollars five years earlier to Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Uzbekistan’s then president Islam Karimov, in exchange for market access. Karimov died last year and Ms Karimova has been under house arrest in Tashkent since 2014.
The corruption scandal tarnished Telia’s reputation in the region. Netherlands-based MTS and Norway’s Telenor were also mired in the bribe-paying controversy.
Afterwards, in a damming indictment for companies operating in the region, Telia said the business environment in Central Asia was too riddled through with corruption that reputational damage was inevitable. It was better, the company had concluded, to sell its stakes in Tcell, Kcell (Kazakhstan), Ucell (Uzbekistan), Azercell (Azerbaijan) and Geocell (Georgia) than to risk more reputational damage.
The Aga Khan already owned a 40% stake in Tcell and had agreed to buy Telia’s stake in September last year.
In January, though, Telia accused the Tajik government of trying to pressure it into paying an unmerited tax bill and in February it said it had asked the anti-monopoly unit for a meeting to discuss why it hadn’t yet approved the deal with the Aga Khan.
A Conway Bulletin correspondent in Dushanbe confirmed that the Tcell network was operating as normal.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
APRIL 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Tajik government has been campaigning for women in Tajikistan to wear traditional brightly-coloured flowing dresses in an effort to dampen the rise in popularity of Islamic headscarves and hijabs, the AFP news agency reported. Tajikistan’s government is increasingly worried about the popularity of extremist Islamic ideology and the drift of many young men towards joining the radical IS group in Syria and Iraq.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
APRIL 2 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Russian air authorities have once again banned Tajikistan’s privately-owned Somon Air from flying to Russia, an apparent resumption of the row between the two countries earlier this year which cut the number of air-links. Air-links between Russia and Tajikistan are especially important for Tajikistan’s migrant work force which relies on jobs in Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
MARCH 22 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Remittances to Central Asia from Russia, a vital engine for economies in the region, fell in 2016 compared to 2015, data from the Russian Central Bank showed. Uzbeks working in Russia sent back $2.74b in 2016, down from $3b in 2015 and Tajiks sent back $1.9b compared to $2.2b the year before. Kyrgyzstan actually increased its remittances from Russia to $1.7b in 2016 from $1.5b.
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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)
