OCT. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s government issued a rare statement denying a claim by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev that he was aware of what he described as “incidences” on the Turkmen-Afghan border. Turkmenistan said Mr Nazarbayev’s claim was “untrue” and “incomprehensible”. Taliban activity has been increasing along the border with Turkmenistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)
OCT. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan is considering following Kazakhstan and allowing its manat currency to float free, the head of the Central Bank Elman Rustamov said to media, effectively warning of a another devaluation. Azerbaijan devalued its currency by 33% in February but has still had to spend billions defending its value since then.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)
OCT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A bill under review by Kazakhstan’s parliament threatens the independence of NGOs in the country, the UN said. The bill is being likened to a law in Russia which cut NGOs’ ability to receive funding from overseas. If the law is passed, the Kazakh government will control funding to all civil society groups.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)
OCT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — KazTransGas, Kazakhstan’s state owned gas distributor, warned Georgia it might take their dispute over its subsidiary to international arbitration if Georgia failed to restart negotiations. KazTransGas is looking for compensation for the $130m it spent on its subsidiary KazTransGas-Tbilisi in 2006-09 before the Georgian government took control of the company.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Human Rights activists in Kazakhstan have asked President Nursultan Nazarbayev to veto a bill being reviewed by the Senate which will make it harder for domestic NGOs to receive funding from overseas. Campaigners said the bill is a form of state control over NGOs.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The biggest mover in the stock markets for Central Asia and the South Caucasus was London-listed KAZ Minerals, which gained a staggering 65% since the beginning of October at 145p on Friday. Its performance was in line with most commodity producers which were hit by the Glencore slump last week.
Kazakhstan-focused Nostrum Oil & Gas was stable this week at around 524 pence, after rebounding from a sharp drop last week. Its failed takeover offer for Tethys Petroleum affected its performance in the market.
Polyus Gold continued its roller- coaster to end the week at 198 pence. Polyus has shown a volatility of +/- 3% over the past three weeks.
In local markets, KEGOC, Kazakhstan’s state-owned electricity company became one of the strongest players in KASE, gaining over 25% in the past three weeks. However, because its stocks are denominated in tenge, the value of its assets has not fared as well as it seems. Speculative moves behind the multi-million dollar transactions of the past weeks have turned KEGOC into an appealing investment in a market marred with worsening assets.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 7 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — The Hague based International Criminal Court (ICC) said that it wanted to start investigating alleged war crimes committed during a 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia.
One of the ICC’s prosecutors, Fatou Bensouda, has lodged a potential case with the court and is waiting for authorisation on whether to launch an official investigation. If a full investigation is initiated and charges brought against either Russian or Georgian officials, the case will likely worsen relations between the two neighbours.
“On the basis of the information available, Prosecutor Bensouda has concluded that there is a reasonable basis to believe that crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court have been committed in Georgia in the context of the armed conflict of August 2008,” the ICC said in a statement.
“She will shortly submit a request to the Pre-Trial Chamber for authorisation to open an investigation into this Situation.”
During the five day war in August 2008 that focused on the Georgian rebel region of South Ossetia, human rights groups alleged that both sides fired cluster bombs.
They also said that forces linked to Russia had burned houses belonging to Georgian farmers.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Scotland-based Wood Group won a service contract to supply an automated system for crude storage facilities at the Tengiz oil field in Western Kazakhstan. It said the automated system would increase storage capacity. Bechtel, a US-based engineering company, signed the multimillion dollar deal with Wood Group.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The IMF said that rising inflation in Azerbaijan was a growing risk and the Central Bank said that its currency reserves had fallen to their lowest level for nearly four years, more data that points to a worsening outlook for the Azerbaijani economy.
In its World Economic Outlook, the IMF said that inflation would measure 5% this year in Azerbaijan, a reflection of the pressure prices have been under since February when the Central Bank devalued its manat currency by 33%.
And so are the Central Bank’s declining currency reserves.
These have fallen to just over $7b at the end of September from $7.3b in August, its lowest level since November 2011 when it was recovering from the 2008/9 Global Financial Crisis.
It’s been a steep, fast fall. At the end of 2014, Azerbaijan’s currency reserves were nearly double at $13.7b.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
BISHKEK/Kyrgyzstan, OCT. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Parliamentary elections in Kyrygzstan on Oct. 4 may be being lauded around the world as a great success for democracy in a region normally more closely associated with dictatorship and the rule of the autocrat but in some circles the gloom is palpable.
And its many of Bishkek’s Western-oriented youth who are the most pessimistic. This was the group that rebelled most strongly against the edict that to register to vote you had to hand over your biometric data to the authorities.
Many decided that it was better to safeguard your personal data and lose the vote.
Sitting in a university canteen in Bishkek, a group discussed the election. None of them had voted and none of them regretted this.
“I do not regret that I did not go to elections because I knew who would win, it was the same people and parties as in the 2010 elections,” said 23-year old Syrgak Arkabayev, a student.
He also said that he would not submit his biometric data ahead of the 2016 presidential elections either.
And he’s not alone. An estimate said that up to a third of Kyrgyzstan’s population had also decided not to file their biometric data to the authorities. They said that the authorities can’t be trusted to safeguard the data.
But in any case, and this undermines the argument that democracy in Kyrgyzstan is in rude health, the dissenters said that there had been little motivation to vote in the election.
“I don’t think elections can change something in Kyrgyzstan,” said Gulzat Matisakova, 24.
Meerim Batyrkanova, 23, who helped an OSCE team to observe elections in Balykchy, a town on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul told a Bulletin correspondent that she was disappointed with the preliminary list of deputies who won seats at the election.
“Mostly, there are the same faces of deputies, ministers and state officials in the list,” she said. “There will be no big changes in politics.”
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)