NOV. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Vita Product, a Georgian dairy company, opened a processing plant in Tsalka, 90km west of Tbilisi. The plant, co-financed by the state under the programme Agro Processing Enterprises, will process more than 3,000 tonnes of raw materials and produce cheese and butter.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia prepared to vote in a referendum which would change the constitution to give the PM more authority in a move that opposition groups have said is designed to strengthen President Serzh Sargsyan’s grip on power.
The debate over the constitution has triggered mass public protests with an estimated 3,000 people marching through Yerevan on Dec. 1 to protest against the referendum set for Dec. 6
The demonstrators said that the proposed changes were a scam to hand Mr Sargsyan more power when he leaves the presidency at the end of his final two year term in 2018.
Mr Sargsyan and his party have said that he has no plans to become PM once he quits as president.
Instead he has argued that the current system of split responsibilities between the PM and the president could create a weakness in emergencies.
Opinion polls in the run-up to the vote said it would be close with, perhaps, those who said they would vote for the changes marginally ahead.
Georgia and Kyrgyzstan have already shifted power away from their presidents to parliament and the PM. Each said the changes were needed to modernise their political systems.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
DEC. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Turkmen military has been fortifying the country’s southern border with Afghanistan, the official government website said. Turkmenistan is increasingly worried about the move north of the Taliban.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
NOV. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kenes Rakishev, an increasingly prominent businessman in Kazakhstan, bought a stake in the Kazakh industrial conglomerate SAT &Co owned by former CEO Rollan Mussinov for an undisclosed amount. Now, Mr Rakishev, son-in-law of defence minister Imangali Tasmagambetov, and the owner of large chunks of Kazakhstan’s biggest companies owns 75.6% of SAT & Co, up from 52.4%.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan will travel to Turkmenistan on Dec. 11/12 to meet with Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, his press office said. Mr Erdogan cancelled a meeting to Ashgabat in October after a bomb attack in Ankara but this trip will take on added significance as it will be his first visit to the former Soviet Union since a row broke out with Russia over the shooting down of a fighter-jet over Syria last month.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — From Iran to Lithuania, several countries have tried to impose their agenda to lay out transit routes across the South Caucasus and Central Asia.
Iran, which will soon be no longer cut off from international trade by Western sanctions, said it wants to become a road and rail transport link between Pakistan and the South Caucasus.
The link, which would run through Afghanistan and Tajikistan, would also connect Central Asia to Azerbaijan, said Iranian minister of roads and urban development Abbas Akhoundi.
In Klaipeda, Lithuania, thousands of kilometres away from the region, representatives from Lithuanian, Kazakh and Georgian railway and maritime companies met with large transport companies — among which were Britain-based DBSchenker and Germany-based InterRail Logistics — to design a China-Europe Trans-Caspian International Transport Route.
Georgia and Turkey also want to be included in the project, which could compete with the EU- sponsored TRACECA corridors spanning from Central Asia to Europe and the Beijing-funded One
Belt One Road project from Eastern China to Western Europe.
In addition, because of the recent diplomatic row between Russia and Turkey, Azerbaijan has come forward and said it wants to become the transport hub for Turkish goods to Central Asia.
The growing links across the region will improve connectivity and cut back on transport times for westbound goods from China, South and Central Asia.
And its worth keeping in mind that stresses caused by the Russia- Turkey row may create opportunities for new trade routes.
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(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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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
NOV. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s parliament approved an increase of 96m lari ($40m) in next year’s budget to improve healthcare. The extra cash will be used by the ministry of health to bring in its universal healthcare programme. Introducing universal healthcare is a key policy of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
NOV. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a move designed to help oil exporters, the Kazakh government said it would cut export duty on a tonne of oil to $40 from $60. Some exporters in Kazakhstan have simply stopped production until either oil prices improved or taxes were cut.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev appeared to be preparing his country for a prolonged economic slump when he ordered the government to triple the amount of debt that it could take on.
He also told the Central Bank that it had to increase the amount of capital that it holds to 500m manat ($478m) up from 10m manat.
Both orders appear to be designed to preempt a sustained economic slowdown. The increase in the amount of debt that the Azerbaijani government can accrue to 4.5b manat and the rise in the Central Bank’s working capital should soften the impact of oil prices staying low.
Like the rest of the region Azerbaijan is trying to cope with a collapse in oil prices.
The price of a barrel of oil has more than halved in the past year. For Azerbaijan, whose economy is reliant on oil sales, the impact has been heavy. It has cut its budget and dropped various infrastructure projects to save cash.
Last week a fire at an internet data centre knocked Azerbaijan off the World Wide Web, highlighting just how fragile and investment-needy some of Azerbaijan’s infrastructure it.
In June, the IMF said Azerbaijan’s economy would grow by only 1.8% this year, a sharp fall from the rapid growth of a few years ago. It also said there would be sluggish growth until 2020. Mr Aliyev’s orders appear to confirm this view.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)