Tag Archives: Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan agrees barter deal with Iran

JUNE 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iran and Turkmenistan have agreed a barter deal which significantly boosts their cooperation, media reported. According to Iranian media reports, Turkmenistan will export around $30b worth of gas to north Iran over the next 10 years in exchange for $30b of technical assistance. The two neighbours have been developing their cooperation over the past few years, often through barter agreements.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Cargolux Airlines International gets Turkmen permission

JUNE 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Luxembourg-based logistics company Cargolux Airlines International has received permission from the Turkmen government to increase the number of flights to Turkmenbashi, a transport hub on the Caspian Sea shore. Since July 2015, Cargolux has connected Luxembourg City and Turkmenbashi with eight flights per week.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Blast at an oil storage kills seven in Turkmenistan

JUNE 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A blast at an oil storage facility in Turkmenbashi in western Turkmenistan killed seven people, local media reported. A government official later denied the report but it would be unusual for a report of this nature to be erroneous. If it is confirmed, the incident will be a blow to the reputation of Turkmenistan’s main Caspian Sea port.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Turkmen President continues his firing spree

JUNE 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to to the northern Turkmen province of Dashoguz this month, President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov continued his firing spree by sacking seven officials and reprimanding nine others, the local language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Mr Berymukhamedov has sacked dozens of government officials over the past couple of years as he looks to shift blame over an economy that continues to falter.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Business comment: BREXIT, Oil & Crisis

JUNE 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – As the results of the referendum on Britain’s EU membership came in early on Friday, the decision to leave the EU has shaken the global market.

The Leave vote has hit the London stock market, where most of the companies focusing on Central Asia and the South Caucasus are listed. Economists now expect more volatility in the short term for the London Stock Exchange.

The so-called Brexit also negatively affected oil prices, sending both Brent and WTI down by 6% in just a few hours. Analysts have said that the period of uncertainty regarding oil prices will now last longer.

Currency markets were also hit, as the British pound lost value against the US dollar, effectively strengthening the greenback.

This had an immediate domino effect on currencies across Central Asia and the South Caucasus, where local currencies weakened against the US dollar.

The increasing uncertainty and volatility is now poised to harm, at least in the short term, local markets in the region, prompting elites in from Tbilisi to Astana to brace for more tough times. It will also hit global markets in general, forcing investors to flee to safety and this means missing out Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

Now both the Fed in the US and the Bank of England will have to revise their economic policies and this is likely to insulate further their economies and pull investment back from Emerging Markets.

In these uncertain times, countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus cannot but hope that Western investors will go against the tide and continue investing in the region.

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(News report from Issue No. 286, published on June 24 2016)

Turkmenistan becomes deputy chairman of UN General Assembly

JUNE 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The UN General Assembly unanimously voted to give Turkmenistan one of the 19 vice-chairs for its 71st session, due to start next September, a PR coup for Turkmenistan’s neutrality policy.

Turkmenistan had already served as vice-chair of the General Assembly in 2007, 2009, and 2013 and it was quick to laud the move as an accolade.

“This is a testament to the international prestige of the Turkmen state, the effectiveness of its foreign policy based on the principles of positive neutrality,” it said on one of its official news websites.

The country’s official neutral policy, though, may be weakening. Security worries in Afghanistan have pushed Turkmenistan. Its army organised a massive military exercise in March, the largest in Turkmenistan’s history.

A representative of Armenia was also elected to serve a deputy chair of the General Assembly.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

Turkmenistan fails to pay salaries

JUNE 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Employees of Turkmenistan’s state-owned oil and gas companies said they have not received salaries for months, the opposition Alternative News Turkmenistan website reported. Previous reports had said that state employees had not received salaries and had been forced to accept state bonds instead.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

Turkmenistan’s dream pipeline to be ready by 2020

JUNE 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – TAPI, the proposed gas pipeline that will pump gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India, will be ready in 2020, Pakistan’s minister of natural resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told media. This is yet another official voice pushing back the completion date of the project, originally planned for 2019.

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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

Hyundai sells buses to Turkmenistan

JUNE 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — South Korean automaker Hyundai said it has sold 500 Aero City buses to Turkmenistan, for $66m. Hyundai has already sold 700 buses to Turkmenistan over the past seven years. The new buses will mostly service the capital, Ashgabat, during the Asian Indoors Games in 2017.

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(News report from Issue No. 284, published on June 10 2016)

Editorial: Turkmen human rights

JUNE 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — It’s taken 13 years but human rights groups scored a significant victory in Turkmenistan when the authorities finally allowed Ayjemal Rejepova and her two young daughters to leave the country to rejoin their family in Europe.

Ms Rejepova’s father is Pirkuli Tanrykuliev, a former Turkmen doctor and opposition leader. He was imprisoned in 1999, released shortly afterwards and then allowed to leave the country for exile in Norway. His wife followed but his daughter was banned from joining him.

As well as being banned from travelling abroad, Ms Rejepova and her husband lost their jobs and were subject to searches and intimidation by the Turkmen security forces.

With the help of Western human rights groups, she has now succeeded in pressuring the Turkmen authorities in scrapping the travel ban. She has been brave but, as Human Rights Watch pointed out, there are thousands of other Turkmen also subject to a travel ban from Turkmenistan because of alleged offences linked to relatives. The pressure needs to be maintained.

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(Editorial from Issue No. 284, published on June 10 2016)