MARCH 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Norway’s parliament challenged the Tajik government to reveal exactly who was the real beneficiary behind the TALCO aluminium smelter company. Newspaper reports have focused on potential corruption at the plant and in deals that included Norway’s part-state owned Norsk Hydro.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Over the past few weeks Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has sacked and reprimanded several government officials accusing them of corruption and providing fake data, a shake up that may betray his frustration with slowing economic and social projects.
The latest officials to feel Mr Berdymukhamedov’s wrath were Akmyrat Mamedov, head of the country’s Statistics Committee, and Batyr Halliyev, the meteorological service. They were both sacked for “short- comings at work”.
And apparently signalling that more sackings were likely, Mr Berdymukhamedov said the government was not immune from corruption. He cited the case of former deputy PM, Baimurat Khodzhamukhamedov, who was found guilty last year of taking bribes of $1.5m.
He went on to harshly criticise the head of the State Commodity and Raw Materials Exchange, a local market for commodities.
Just days earlier, Mr Berdymukhamedov had reshuffled government officials in the National Security Service and the Border Service.
In countries as reclusive as Turkmenistan, government appointments give an insight on the political equilibrium within the country.
Mr Berdymukhamedov is known for publicly shaming officials for incompetence and strongly advocating against corruption. Opposition activists abroad, though, say that these charges are generally fabricated to crack down on dissenting or inefficient bureaucrats.
A regional economic crisis has hit government budgets across the region. Although reclusive and not given to releasing anything other than the most positive economic data, information leaking out of Turkmenistan suggests that this downturn has hit it hard too. Currency controls and a deferment of government salaries have all been muted.
The mass sackings is another signifier that all is not well at Mr Berdymukhamedov’s court.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a $57.6m deal, Houston-based Greenfields Petroleum agreed to buy the 66% of Bahar Energy, an energy company exploiting the offshore Bahar oilfield, that it didn’t already own from Azerbaijan’s Baghlan Group. Bahar Energy, registered in Dubai, operates the field with Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR. Upon the completion of the $57.6m deal, Greenfields Petroleum will own 100% of Bahar Energy.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Foreign direct investment (FDI) into Georgia measured $1.35b in 2015, a drop of around 23% from 2014. FDI is an important part of Georgia’s economy. It is, generally, volatile but the sharp fall may be indicative of an overall slump in economic conditions in the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 8 2016, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) – Hundreds of people queued for their first taste of McDonalds in Kazakhstan when it opened its inaugural restaurant in Central Asia in Astana.
McDonalds has teamed up with Kazakh businessman Kairat Boranbayev, whose daughter is married to Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev’s grandson, to bring its burgers to Kazakhstan.
The opening of McDonalds’ restaurant is a boost for Mr Nazarbayev who is looking to bolster support ahead of elections despite a worsening economic slowdown.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – UK-based InterContinental Hotels Group opened a new five-star hotel in Borjomi, a Georgian resort town. The hotel, branded Crowne Plaza, cost $32m to build. Borjomi is famous for its water. Borjomi fizzy water is one of Georgia’s biggest exports. InterContinental also owns a Holiday Inn hotel in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Central Bank kept interest rates steady at 8%, saying that inflation was due to slow and dip into its target zone. Like the rest of the region, Georgia has been increasingly worried about inflation pressure building up in its economy. Prices and salaries have been rising as the value of the lari has fallen. Overall inflation in February was 5.6%.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 7 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom reached an agreement with the government of Georgia to supply gas via Armenia, renewing a deal that has bound the two countries together.
The deal had been in jeopardy after negotiations over additional gas supplies to Georgia from Russia were frozen. But both the Kremlin and Tbilisi see the Armenia gas supply arrangement as a useful dialogue forum and forced it through.
After last-minute negotiations, Kakha Kaladze, Georgia’s minister of energy, confirmed a deal.
“We have reached an agreement with Gazprom, now we just have to sign it,” he told media.
The deal, Mr Kaladze said was similar to the earlier one, with Georgia receiving 10% of the total gas Gazprom sent to Armenia. Georgia, which has been transforming itself into a transit hub for the South Caucasus, had wanted cash instead of gas for the arrangement but Russia refused to budge.
The renewed deal between Georgia and Gazprom will also be a relief to Armenia, which is reliant on supplies from Russia. It has struck deals with Iran but Russia remains its most important partner.
Until the first quarter of 2016, Armenia will continue paying s discounted rate of $165/thousand cubic metres, which Gazprom cut by 12.% last September.
Armenia and Gazprom will have to negotiate a new price for gas for the rest of the year.
Earlier, on March 4, Georgia signed a deal with Azerbaijan to receive an extra 500,000 cubic metres of gas. It had been in negotiations with Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia for months to seal the deal.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan is AvtoVAZ’s largest export market but a duty introduced at the start of the year by the Kazakh government to support its car making industry, has, apparently, destroyed it.
The number of AvtoVAZ cars delivered to the country jumped in 2015 due to the tenge-rouble currency imbalance for the first part of the year.
From the end of 2014 the rouble started collapsing, but the Kazakh Central Bank stubbornly kept the tenge at 185/$1.
This made imports very cheap, undermining Kazakhstan’s own carmaking industry but boosting AvtoVAZ.
In the first half of 2015, car sales were down by one-third. For the year, sales were down 40% to 97,446 units, the lowest level since 2012.
Even President Nursultan Nazarbayev weighed in and said that it was wrong for Kazakhs to buy cheaper products abroad and push the domestic industry out of the competition.
The Kazakh government also looked into subsidising the local automotive sector and impose import duties — an issue that must surely have raised concerns for both the World Trade Organisation and the Eurasian Economic Union.
The new $2,000 car import tax has also had an almost immediate effect. It has made imports unsustainable. It has simply priced them out of the market, denting consumer choice and, also, Kazakh- Russian relations.
Kazakhstan and Russia are supposed to be allies. The Eurasian Economic Union, a Kremlin project, was supposed to protect the area from interventionist duties. Where was it when Kazakhstan said it was going to impose its $2,000 import levy on car imports.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in the Tajik town of Isfara jailed three men to up to 11 years in prison for offences linked to their memberships of the now banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT). The Tajik authorities banned the IRPT, the country’s only real opposition party last year, and has since been imprisoning its members. The West has criticised this as a crackdown.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)