SEPT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan will spend $4.3b over the next three years improving living conditions around the Aral Sea, media reported. The Aral Sea had been the fourth largest lake in the world but upstream Soviet irrigation policies diverted water from its tributary rivers and shrunk it to a fraction of its former size.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a conference in Tashkent this week, Deputy Premier Rustam Azimov said corruption and extortion were among the hurdles that private entrepreneurs face in Uzbekistan.
This is important because it is rare for government officials to admit that corruption blights Uzbekistan and its officials.
“Businesses in Uzbekistan are today experiencing a lot of problems related to the illegal interference in entrepreneurial activity. There is excessive bureaucracy, as well as bribery and extortion,” media quoted him as saying. Mr Azimov was speaking at national conference on the security forces’ role in reforming and diversifying the economy.
A Tashkent-based analyst said Mr Azimov’s comments may be a signal the government was about to launch an anti-corruption purge.
It may also be a way of deflecting problems that have hit Uzbekistan. Remittances have fallen by half and inflation is rising. Most of these problems are regional and linked to a weak Russian economy and a fall in oil prices, but the Uzbek government will want to shift responsibility.
Transparency International, the global anti-corruption watchdog, ranks Uzbekistan as one of the worst countries in the world for corruption.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
AUG. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek officials held a ceremony to mark the beginning of construction of a new tyre plant in the Angren special industrial zone, 90km outside of Tashkent. The total cost of the plant will be $230m. Uzkhimprom, the state-owned chemical industry holding, Uzavtoprom, the Uzbek car industry holding, and the two metallurgic complexes at Navoi and Almalyk will build the plant, the Trend News Agency reports.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
SEPT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – From Sept.1 government salaries and pensions in Uzbekistan increased by 10%, media reported, another indication that inflation is accelerating across the region.
Uzbek president Islam Karimov ordered 26, ostentatiously to improve the quality of life for ordinary people but in reality to keep up with price inflation in basic foodstuffs, utilities and petrol.
Like the rest of the region, Uzbekistan’s currency has fallen sharply in value and remittance from Russia have roughly halved.
The Uzbek government usually increases salaries and pensions once or twice a year. The previous salary increase of 12% came in December 2014.
As well as boosting salaries, the government is also increasing import duties on major staples ranging from meat and poultry, to dairy and fruits by around 30%. University tuition fees have risen by 15%. Part of the thinking behind the increase in duties is to ring-fence agricultural production in Uzbekistan during the economic downturn.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
SEPT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan Airways closed its office in Kiev, due to delays in reinstating flights between the Ukrainian capital and Tashkent. “Our airline has been expecting to receive permission from the Ukrainian aviation authorities since May,” Alisher Abdualiyev, the Uzbek ambassador to Ukraine, told the kapital.ua website. In May 2015, flights between Tashkent and Kiev were discontinued due to the absence of an agreement between the two countries.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
SEPT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia’s health department blocked the transit of 40 tonnes of dairy products from Latvia and Germany from travelling across its territory to Uzbekistan. Reports said the shipment had broken transit rules. European producers have dodged sanctions on Russia by sending products to Uzbekistan which they then send onto Moscow.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Speaking at a ceremony to mark 24 years of independence from the Soviet Union, Uzbek president Islam Karimov said that he wouldn’t allow a foreign military base to be established in Uzbekistan and that the country would always maintain its neutrality. Germany has a military base in southern Uzbekistan
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
SEPT. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan is gearing up for its cotton harvest season by preparing the forced mobilisation of hundreds of students, teacher and medical staff, media reported. Cotton is a lucrative export for Uzbekistan. It has previously drawn international condemnation for using children to pick cotton.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
ALMATY/Kazakhstan, AUG. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Reports from Uzbekistan said that Marinika Babanazarova, the curator and de facto defender of the world famous Savitsky Collection in Nukus, Uzbekistan, has been sacked.
Ms Babanazarova has held the job for over 30 years. She took over from Igor Savitsky himself and considered it her duty to keep the collection together despite pressure to split it up.
She confirmed to the New York Times that she had been sacked. Earlier reports said that the Uzbek authorities had fired her for stealing pictures and making forgeries, accusations she denied.
Relations between Ms Babanazarova and the Uzbek authorities have generally been strained. In 2011, they blocked her from travelling to New York to see the premiere of a film about the collection.
Savitsky was a Soviet archaeologist and painter who collected, often at great personal risk, banned avant-garde art. He travelled across the Soviet Union to collect the art, from dissident artists or from their relatives, and bring it back to his base in the remote city of Nukus in western Uzbekistan. There he was able to avoid the attention of the authorities.
The collection of roughly 90,000 pieces only achieved international fame after his death and the subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. It has also put Nukus, a scruffy town once classed as a secret because of its chemical weapons production, on the international art trail.
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(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)
AUG. 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Uzbekistan said they had arrested nine more people in connection to financial crimes linked to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, RFE/RL reported. Until March 2014 Ms Karimova was one of the most powerful people in Uzbekistan. She has been under house since then.
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(News report from Issue No. 244, published on Aug. 21 2015)
