Tag Archives: Turkmenistan

Pakistan wants Turkmenistan more involved in CASA-1000

SEPT. 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Pakistan said it wanted Turkmenistan to be more involved in the CASA-1000 electricity transmission project and drop plans to build an alternative electricity supply route. CASA-1000 is a World Bank-backed $1.2b plan to bring electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Turkmenistan has pledged to either join the project or supply electricity to Pakistan via alternative routes.

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(News report from Issue No. 295, published on Sept. 9 2016)

Comment: Uzbekistan’s quiet handover of power

SEPT. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After years of jostling, the real battle for power in a post-Karimov Uzbekistan has started.

President Islam Karimov, who has ruled since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has died after suffering a stroke. Officially this means that the Speaker of the Senate, Nigmatulla Yuldashev, will take over for three months. Long-term, though, the picture is more complicated.

Uzbekistan has been in the throes of a proxy war over succession for two years, ever since Karimov’s eldest daughter Gulnara Karimova was placed under house arrest and her closest associates imprisoned for financial crimes. She had been seen as Karimov’s natural, if unpopular, heir-apparent.

Her fall from grace left PM Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Rustam Azimov, the finance minister, as the front runners for the top job.

The orchestrator-in-chief, it was assumed, was Rustam Inoyatov, the Uzbek secret police chief, who popped up in a rare photo during a visit to China in 2014. Reports from Uzbekistan, a notoriously repressive and reclusive regime, have suggested that he has been keeping a lid as best as possible on warring factions within the elite.

Certainly, Karimov appears to have played a reduced role in organising his succession since 2014. It is doubtful he ever wanted to place Gulnara, the daughter he doted over, under house arrest.

Gulnara’s sister, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, has been the most vocal senior Uzbek over Karimov’s illness but she has little support and lives in Europe and has previously shown no interest in power.

So, it’s likely the Uzbek regime will agree on an insider to take over from Karimov, either one of the front-runners or – and perhaps this is more likely – an obscure bureaucrat who comes with neither a power base nor an agenda. A compromise figure acceptable to Uzbekistan’s power-groups.

This method has been tried and tested with relative success in Central Asia previously with the handover of power to Kurbangbuly Berdymukhamedov, an obscure former dentist, in Turkmenistan when Saparmurat Niyazov died suddenly in 2006. Berdymukhamedov has opened up Turkmenistan’s economy and made it a major source of gas to China. He has also built up a fairly serious personality cult.

Uzbekistan is a more complicated country than Turkmenistan but the power brokers inside the Uzbek government trying to work out their post-Karimov game plan do have a Turkmen blueprint to work from.

They may well choose to follow it.

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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Turkmen president flies to Berlin to talk gas deals

AUG. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov flew to Berlin, a rare visit to Europe, to discuss potential Turkmen gas imports with German leader Angela Merkel.

The visit was controversial because Turkmenistan, which holds the fourth largest gas reserves, is considered one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Human rights activists said that Mr Berdymukhamedov would consider the invitation to Berlin to be a PR coup which he would use in domestic propaganda campaigns.

And speaking alongside Ms Merkel, Mr Berdymukhamedov grinned and talked up Turkmenistan’s gas producing capabilities.

“We in Turkmenistan are interested in delivering our energy resources to the West,” he said.

A few hours earlier a Turkmen delegation had delivered a draft plan for setting up a trans-Caspian corridor to pump gas to Europe.

Ms Merkel said that as well as discussing gas supply deals with Turkmenistan she had also asked for Mr Berdymukhamedov to give access to Turkmenistan’s prisons to Western diplomats.

Human rights lobby groups have condemned Turkmenistan’s alleged practice of secretive imprisonments.

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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Turkmen president to fly to Berlin

AUG. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was due to visit German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, a rare European trip for Turkmenistan’s leader. The visit is likely to focus on potential gas supplies to Europe from Turkmenistan but human rights groups have been piling pressure on Ms Merkel to bring up their various human rights grievances with Mr Berdymukhamedov.

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(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)

Central Asian FMs meet in the US

AUG. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to boost the US’ regional profile, US Secretary of State John Kerry hosted a summit with all five foreign secretaries from Central Asia. Dubbed C5 +1, the meeting was a follow-up from its inaugural session in Samarkand last year. It’s important because the US has been accused of losing interest in the region since pulling its military out of Afghanistan in 2014.

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(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

Turkmen President reprimands several officials

JULY 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — During a visit to the Mary province, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov reprimanded several government officials and sacked several others for delays to various construction projects, opposition websites reported. Earlier in July, during a visit to the Lebap province, Mr Berdymukhamedov sacked 11 public officials. As Mr Berdymukhamedov fights to contain the fallout from a worsening economic outlook, his rampages against and sackings of government officials intensifies.

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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

China to build piplene between Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

JULY 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — China will go ahead with the construction of a fourth line of the Central Asia-China gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, officials said. Luo Wei Dong, a deputy at China’s ministry of commerce told the Kremlin- funded Sputnik news agency that the pipeline will be built in the near future and will increase the overall capacity by 54% to 85b cubic metres/year.

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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Turkmen airport holds record

JULY 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Ashgabat International Airport now holds the world record for largest bird-shaped building according to the World Record Academy, a competitor of the Guinness World Records organisation. The new passenger terminal of the Turkmen airport was built to resemble the lacyn, the national falcon-like bird. The building spans 364m. Turkmenistan also boasts the largest indoors Ferris wheel and the largest hand-woven carpet.

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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Turkmen President promotes his son

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Serdar Berdymukhamedov, son of Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, was appointed to an unspecified post in the country’s foreign ministry, the opposition website Alternative News Turkmenistan reported. According to the report, Serdar Berdymukhamedov previously worked in the now-dismissed state agency responsible for hydrocarbon resources.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Briefing: Region’s economies sputter into life

JULY 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — >>Malaise, downturn recession. What exactly going on in Central Asia and the South Caucasus?

>>All countries in the region are either growing slower than last year or, in some cases, their economies are even shrinking. The crisis is regional, although each country has shown its own specific problems.

>>This is the region-wide problem. I can see but what caused it?

>>The US dollar strengthened so much in 2014 that it triggered a sharp drop in oil and commodity prices. This pulled dollars away from Emerging Markets, like our own patch. As commodity prices sank, Russia fell into a crisis that quickly turned into a recession. The depreciation of the rouble cut the value of salaries earned by migrant workers, triggering a slowdown in remittances to Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

>>Okay, but oil prices picked up again since the 13- year low point in January. Isn’t that good for energy exporters in Central Asia and the South Caucasus?

>>Higher oil prices have helped state-owned oil companies to relax their emergency mode, but they’re still too low to justify the region’s most expensive projects. Think of the Kashagan oil project in Kazakhstan’s sector of the Caspian Sea, or the upgrade of Azeri Chirag-Guneshli oil project in Azerbaijan. Plus there are negative signs for transparency over the re-organisation of government companies and structures in the energy sector in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

>>And what about the other commodities, such as gold and aluminium?

>>Gold is a big component of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP as it depends on the performance of the Kumtor gold mine in the east of the country. This year, operational problems and corporate battles have slowed production, which has significantly hit Kyrgyzstan’s growth figures. It now could slip into a recession. Tajikistan, on the other hand posted a promising 6.6% GDP growth in the first half of 2016 and state-owned smelter TALCO increased aluminium production. But these numbers should be read with caution. TALCO also said that it is currently operating at a loss, as its production costs are 25% higher than market prices.

>>Right, so is it all bad?

>>Not necessarily. Dollarisation, as Georgia’s Central Banker said this week, is still a problem across the region and the currencies continue to be weak. But despite some devaluations and depreciations, most of them have kept steady in 2016, which is a sign that governments want to keep their economies stable and will spend their reserves to prop them up.

>>And for companies looking to do business in the region, how bad is it?

>>If in 2015 we saw scores of international companies running away from projects in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, this year we’ve seen promising developments, such as the final investment decision for the expansion of the Tengiz oil- field in Kazakhstan and the signing of the contract for the construction of the Rogun dam in Tajikistan, both multibillion-dollar commitments. French hypermarket Auchan has also opened up its long-awaited store in Dushanbe. Perhaps confidence is returning or at least a sense of “let’s just get on with it”.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)