MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Shokir Fayzullayev, head of Uzbekneftegaz, the Uzbek oil and gas company, said Uzbekistan intends to start an $18.65b investment project that will re-orientate its strategy for gas towards refining it rather than exporting it. Mr Fayzullayev said Uzbekistan wanted to add more value to its gas production.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek cinemas are showing a slickly made feature-length film which appears designed to project the government’s version of events in the town of Andijan 10 years ago when soldiers killed hundreds of people.
The 2-1/2 hour long film, called Sotqin and made by the government backed UzFilm studios, tells the story of two disenchanted brothers from a provincial town.
With the help of a foreign spy and agitators linked to Western non-governmental organisations they become increasingly religious and are persuaded to launch an attack on government buildings with a group of Islamic extremists.
Human rights groups have accused the Uzbek government of using the film, released in March, as a propaganda tool.
“It [the Uzbek government] wants to provide its own narrative — a quite strident, assertive narrative that Andijan for us is closed and any violence that was committed — or any harm that was done — was done by outsiders, not by us,” Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia programme director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, told the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Uzbekistan has always disputed the widely-accepted Western version of the Andijan killings of May 13 2005. It has said that 187 people died in Anijan and that most were armed Islamic extremists. Human rights groups said that the death toll was far higher and that those killed were unarmed civilians.
The killings in Andijan triggered an international outcry. Uzbekistan was seen as a pariah state and was shunned by the West. This changed, though, over the past few years because NATO has needed Uzbekistan to help it withdraw its military kit from Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In what could be a potential game-changer for Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov has ordered the government to sell stakes in 68 large companies to strategic foreign investors.
Media quoted a presidential decree which said that stakes in companies such
as Navoiazot, a cement maker, and Turonbank would be up for sale.
“It is time to carry out a full-scale critical analysis of the availability and effectiveness of the presence of state shares in the economy, in other words, ‘the state’s presence in the economy’, and on this basis, to define our actions for a significant increase in the private sector’s presence in the economy,” media quoted Mr Karimov as saying.
It’s unclear from the decree and the media coverage who this apparent relaxation of state controls over Uzbek industry and commerce is actually aimed at.
Western business has generally had a strained relationship with Uzbekistan. There have been a number of instances where Western companies — generally metals companies — have accused Uzbekistan of grabbing their assets.
Instead, Uzbekistan may be thinking of Chinese companies, which have been making in-roads over the past few years, or even businesses from South Korea and India.
Uzbekistan’s economy, like other countries in the region has been struggling to cope with a downturn in global energy prices and a sharp fall in the performance of the Russian economy. Remittances from Russia have dropped considerably.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – KT, the second largest South Korean mobile network, said that it had won a $110m contract to build an advanced electricity metering system. The project is in partnership with the Asian Development Bank. The plan is to install 1m metres in Uzbekistan’s three biggest cities by 2017.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
APRIL 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s Central Bank said it would keep its key interest rate at 9% because the economy was set to hit its inflation target. In January the Central Bank raised its interest rate by 1%. Uzbekistan’s main currency exchange exists on the black market but the statement gives insight into the Central Bank.
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(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)
MAY 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan plans to increase gold production by up to 30% between 2015 and 2019, the Azerbaijani news agency Trend quoted a government source as saying. Gold is a major source of foreign currency for the Uzbek government.
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(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)
MAY 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan has increased the price of electricity it charges its citizens by 7.4%, media reported, the second price rise in the last six months. Prices for basic utilities in Uzbekistan have been rising steadily.
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)
APRIL 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The United States will give Uzbekistan boats and vehicles to counter the drugs trade, media reported quoting its embassy in Tashkent.
The extra military kit, worth $6.2m, will irritate human rights campaigners. They say that Uzbekistan is one of the world’s worst human rights abusers. The US says it has to deal with Uzbekistan because Realpolitik demands it.
The US is withdrawing its military kit from Afghanistan mainly through Uzbekistan.
It has already said that it will leave behind surplus kit that it deems non-lethal. These are vehicles, trucks, body armour and night vision goggles.
“The goal of this Project is to assist law enforcement agencies of the Republic of Uzbekistan to develop investigative leads for disrupting and dismantling major drug trafficking organisations involved in illicit trade of drugs, psychotropic substances and their precursors,” the US embassy in Tashkent said on its website.
As well as hitting the drugs trade, the US may also be planning to quietly help Uzbekistan bolster its border defences against incursions from the Taliban.
Central Asian states have said that they are worried about the spread north of the Taliban once NATO quits Afghanistan.
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)
APRIL 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Reacting to the traditional start of the fighting season in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan ordered its Border Guards service to beef up its numbers along its southern border, Russian news agencies reported. Central Asian states are worried about the creep north of the Taliban.
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(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)
APRIL 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A parliamentary delegation from Kuwait visited Uzbekistan to discuss boosting ties. Kuwait wants to win a non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council in 2018-19.
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(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)
