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Noricum says it will start gold production in Georgia in Q3

TBILISI, MARCH 6 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) — UK-based Noricum Gold will install a second drilling rig at its Kvemo Bolnisi mine in Georgia, it said, to bring forward the start of production to the third quarter of 2016.

Noricum said in a statement it was stepping up its operations in Georgia, after it announced new discoveries last month.

“Having recently raised £1 million which is sufficient to see us through to production in Q3 2016, we intend to firstly produce gold ore from Kvemo Bolnisi where drilling is currently underway, and then at Tsitel Sopeli,” Greg Kuenzel, Noricum’s general director, said in a statement.

Mr Kuenzel also said the company had raised £1m ($1.4m) to bring in the extra equipment and speed up production.

Noricum owns a 50% stake in the Bolnisi gold and copper project, an 860 square km complex of mines in southern Georgia.

It bought the stake for £2.6m ($3.7m) from GMC Investment in July 2015. The remaining 50% belongs to Georgia’s Caucasian Mining Group, owned by Russian entrepreneur Dmitri Troitsky.

Reserves at the Bolnisi project include 980,000 tonnes of copper, 6.6m ounces of gold and 22m ounces of silver.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Azerbaijan launches joint military exercises

MARCH 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani and Turkish air forces launched joint exercises, media reported, highlighting the close relations between the two countries. Azerbaijan and Turkey regularly hold military exercises together. Azerbaijan is still officially at war with Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey has fallen out with Russia over the shooting down of a Russian fighter-jet last year.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

EU criticises Kazakhstan

MARCH 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Parliament issued a rare strongly worded statement criticising a recent crackdown on media in Kazakhstan. “MEPs are deeply concerned about the climate for the media and free speech in Kazakhstan, where strong pressure on independent media outlets includes some being closed down, and news agency directors and journalists being detained, placed under criminal investigation and sentenced to prison,” it said.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Kazakhs bad debt worsens

MARCH 9 2016, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — Non-performing loans, a major signifier of the banking sector’s economic health, have started to rise again in most large Kazakh banks, data showed.

Other than Kazkommertsbank, which wrote-off swathes of non-performing loans last year after it merged with debt-ridden BTA Bank, only Halyk Bank of the big lenders improved its loan portfolio in 2015.

Halyk Bank is owned by business- man Timur Kulibayev and his wife Dinara Nazarbayeva, daughter of Kazakh Pres. Nursultan Nazarbayev. Tsensabank, Bank Centre Credit and the Kazakh subsidiary of Russia’s Sberbank all saw the ratio of non- performing loans in their portfolios worsen.

Kazakhstan is sensitive to the proportion of non-performing loans held by its banks because after the 2008/9 Financial Crisis it was considered to have one of the worst ratios of bad to good loans in the world.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Pakistani military chief visits Tajikistan

MARCH 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – General Raheel Sharif, Pakistan’s military chief, made his first trip to Tajikistan, pledging his full support for defeating terrorism in the region. This is important as it shows the growing bonds between Central and South Asia. Tajikistan is part of the CASA-1000 plan to generate electricity in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan which is then exported to Pakistan, via Afghanistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Oil output to rise in Kazakhstan

MARCH 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan will raise its target annual oil production in 2016 by 5% to 77m tonnes if oil prices remain at around $40/barrel, media quoted energy minister Vladimir Shkolnik as saying. This is important because a rise in both production and price would give government revenues in Kazakhstan a much-needed lift.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

China gives up Kazakh prisoners

MARCH 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – China handed over four prisoners jailed for drug trafficking over to Kazakhstan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. The deal, whereby the unnamed prisoners serve out their sentences in Kazakhstan, underlines the close relations between Kazakhstan and China.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Kyrgyzstan asks Eurasian Bank for crisis cash

BISHKEK, MARCH 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s finance minister Adylbek Kasymaliyev asked the Eurasian Fund for Stabilisation and Development to double its aid to $427m to help the country weather both an economic downturn and the impact of joining the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union.

Remittance inflows to Kyrgyzstan have fallen by 40%, the som currency has lost 25% of its value and major infrastructure projects have been cancelled over the past six months.

Mr Kasymaliyev said Kyrgyzstan had already spent more than the $255m of loans and grants that the Fund, managed by the Eurasian Development Bank had given it.

“We have already surpassed our limit of $255m by allocating $260m. For this reason, we have asked the Council to raise the limit to $427,” Mr Kasymaliyev told local media.

The funds will be used for a range of projects, including agriculture.

Importantly, though, analysts said that although Kyrgyzstan needed to protect itself against the regional economic crisis, it was under extra pressure from its entry last August into the Eurasian Economic Union. The government said the trade block, which includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia, would improve conditions for Kyrgyz business.

Instead, though, businesses have complained it has exposed them to unfair competition.

Ayilchy Sarybayev, an analyst based in Bishkek, said the cash would be used to subsidise Kyrgyz farmers.

“The fund is being raised because small and medium enterprises cannot compete with Kazakh and Russian ones now,” he said. “Kyrgyz entrepreneurs have started buying (more expensive) agricultural equipment from Kazakhstan and Russia (rather than from China).”

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Norway parliament challenges Tajikistan’s TALCO to reveal its true owner

MARCH 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A parliamentary committee in Norway opened an investigation into alleged corruption by state-owned aluminium producer Norsk Hydro in Tajikistan, the second probe in the last six months into bribery against a Norwegian government-owned company working in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

Specifically, the Norwegian parliament now wants to see Hydro’s contract with Tajikistan’s state-owned aluminium plant TALCO. It challenged the notoriously secretive TALCO, the biggest industrial asset in Tajikistan, to reveal who its true beneficial owners are. Many believe that, via a network of offshore companies, it is Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and his family.

Media quoted Jette Christensen, MP and a member of the committee, as saying: “We and the minister must find out who are the hidden owners, therefore this is an order to both Hydro and the minister. We also believe that we must see the entire contract Hydro had with TALCO Management Ltd.”

TALCO Management Ltd., the shell company for TALCO, is registered in the British Virgin Islands and is seen by many observers as a safe haven for corrupt practices.

Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv wrote an in-depth story about the Hydro-TALCO case in mid- February, an article that appears to have triggered parliament’s renewed interest deals between the two companies between 1993 and 2003.

Hydro have denied the allegations and sent a 17-page reply to parliament. “There are no indications of Hydro having acted in violation of applicable laws, internal rules or guidelines,” Dag Mejdell, Hydro’s chairman, said in the statement.

“The company has zero tolerance towards corruption.”

The Norwegian government owns a 34.3% stake in Norsk Hydro.

In November 2015, Norway’s minister of industry sacked Svein Aaser, chairman of Telenor, a telecoms company under investigation for corruption in Uzbekistan in 2007/8 linked to payments for 3G licences. The investigation is ongoing.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

AvtoVaz cuts exports to Kazakhstan

MARCH 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian carmaker AvtoVAZ has stopped exporting finished cars to Kazakhstan due to the introduction of new customs duties, Vedomosti reported quoting a source close to the company. The new taxes, introduced this year, increase the overall average price of an auto- mobile by $2,000. Instead, AvtoVAZ will expand its exports of car parts to its factories in Kazakhstan. This was confirmed to Kazakh media late on Thursday by an AvtoVAZ spokes- person.

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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)