DEC. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — GM Uzbekistan posted a 47% fall in sales of cars to Russia in the first eleven months of the year. Only 18,753 cars manufactured by the General Motors-led joint venture with the Uzbek government were sold in the Russian market. In January-November last year, GM Uzbekistan sold over 35,000 cars to Russia. Russia is its most important market.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(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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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)
DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s telecommunications ministry said it wanted to spend nearly $900m over the next five years improving broadband access across the country. Internet penetration in Uzbekistan is still low.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 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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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)
DEC. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian oil company Lukoil said it increased both investment and production in Uzbekistan’s gas sector in the first nine months of 2015. Investment grew by 38% to $759m, compared to last year. Production rose to 4.7b cubic metres, up 26% from around 3.7b cubic metres last year. Lukoil is one of Uzbekistan’s biggest investors. Uzbekistan has said it wants to increase its gas production.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
DEC. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek government has signed a decree that will allow people and small businesses to sell electricity they generate via solar panels to the state for the first time, media reported.
Potentially this edict is a small scale way of giving private entrepre- neurship a boost. As the website norma.uz reported earlier this year, there are a number of small businesses producing solar power electricity in Uzbekistan.
With its long, hot, cloudless summers, Uzbekistan is ripe for solar power.
Earlier this year, Uzbekistan launched a $700m project to build three solar panel farms to generate electricity.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
NOV. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A trial has started in Sweden of a man accused of attempting to murder Obidkhon Qori Nazarov, an Uzbek dissident, in 2012. Yury Zhukovsky is accused of shooting Mr Nazarov twice in the head outside his apartment. In an interview with Eurasianet, the Swedish prosecutor said that he thought Mr Zhukovsky was linked to the Uzbek authorities. Mr Nazarov had fled Uzbekistan in 2006 after the Uzbek authorities accused him of trying to plot a coup.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A report by the UN’s International Labour Office (ILO) said the use of child labour to pick cotton in Uzbekistan has reduced although it hasn’t been totally eradicated.
The ILO’s findings are important because Uzbekistan has come under growing criticism for its use of children, medical staff and teachers for picking cotton. Cotton is one of Uzbekistan’s biggest exports, although many Western companies have stopped buying Uzbek cotton.
“The use of children in the cotton harvest has become rare and sporadic,” the ILO said in its report. “Authorities have taken a range of measures to reduce the incidence of child labour and make it socially unacceptable.”
It said that a campaign to stop teachers and medics being used to pick cotton has been less successful.
Activists rank Uzbekistan as one of the worst countries in the world for upholding human rights.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian telecoms company VimpelCom could be close to a $775m settlement with a US court that accused it of paying bribes to access mobile licences in Uzbekistan, Bloomberg reported. Earlier in November, the company set aside $900m for settlement costs. VimpelCom representatives declined to comment.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
