OCT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Highlighting the close relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey, the head of the Turkish General Staff, Hulusi Akar, visited Baku. In Baku, General Akar met his Azerbaijani counterpart and, as expected, emphasised Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan’s position on Nagorno-Karabakh which it disputes with Armenia.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan said it has reopened its embassy in Minsk, three years after it broke off relations with Belarus. In 2012, Belarus refused to extradite former Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who had been sentenced to prison in Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan joined the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union in August. Belarus is also a member.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 8/9 2015, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — After an on-off build-up lasting months, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko visited Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev in Astana a meeting that could upset relations between Kazakhstan and Russia.
Mr Poroshenko’s visit to Astana is a diplomatic victory for Mr Nazarbayev who wants to be viewed as a potential peace broker between Kiev and Moscow over the civil war in eastern Ukraine. Mr Nazarbayev visited Kiev last December.
At a joint press conference, Mr Poroshenko thanked Mr Nazarbayev for his support “of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Kazakhstan has to tread a careful diplomatic tightrope as it needs to appease both its Western backers, who support Ukraine, and also Russia, with which it has close economic and political ties.
Kazakhstan has not recognised Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
During his visit, Mr Poroshenko also met with Kazakh prime minister Karim Massimov to discuss trade opportunities that will emerge in 2016 with the establishment of a free trade zone between Ukraine and the European Union and with Kazakhstan’s accession to the World Trade Organisation.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s Ucom, best known for its fibre optic cable business, said it wanted to hand Orange Armenia to three banks to guarantee its liquidity during the increasingly tough economic climate. The Armenian mobile regulator said it will consider the decision later this week. The loss-making Orange Armenia was owned by French company Orange until Ucom bought it in August.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 5 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Signalling that a regional economic crisis is worse than it had thought, the Georgian finance ministry said it would scrap a flagship policy that would have cut corporation tax and encouraged business growth.
The Georgian Dream government said earlier this year that it wanted to copy an Estonian tax policy that scrapped corporation tax on profit re-invested into businesses in order to generate more growth. The downside was that, in the short term at least, tax receipts would also drop.
And now, at a meeting to discuss the government’s proposed budget for 2016, deputy finance minister Giorgi Kakauridze said that plans to introduce the tax cuts this year had been pushed back indefinitely.
“This is quite a difficult process, fraught with quite a lot of risk,” media quoted Mr Kvirikashvili as saying. “Yes this [model] has its positive sides, but there are lots of negative aspects as well, so it has to be thoroughly considered. No final decision has been made in which direction this reform will go.”
The bottom line is that Georgia’s budget relies heavily on corporation tax. To cut this tax now, with the economy worsening, would be fool- hardy, the government appears to have decided.
Analysts, though, were scathing and said the tax reform should never have been discussed in the first place.
“It is not the first time Georgian Dream has promised changes they’re unable to keep. They should have known that the economic crisis would make this reform a bad idea.” said Giorgi Aptsiauri, economist at the Georgian Institute of Politics. “Income from corporation tax is a large part of the budget. They can not afford a cut in revenue with the current economic situation.”
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 4 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — At a parliamentary election, Kyrgyzstan held what observers said was the most democratic and transparent vote in Central Asia’s post-Soviet history.
The Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan, the party of Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev, won the elections with 27% of the vote, taking 38 seats out of parliament’s total of 120. This is an increase on the 2010 election when the Social Democrats won 28 seats.
The Central Election Committee said that of the 14 established parties at the election, six won more than a 7% share of the vote and would enter parliament.
Other than some technical issues with equipment designed to read some people’s identification, Western vote monitors from Europe’s OSCE passed off the election as broadly democratic and fair.
“Voting was assessed positively in 95% of polling station observed, it was orderly and well organised in the large majority of polling stations observed, and only relatively minor technical problems with the voter identification equipment and ballot scanners were reported,” the OSCE said in a statement.
And ordinary Kyrgyz took much pride in the Western monitors’ democratic assessment of the election.
Cholpon Dzhaparkulova, a 22- year resident of Bishkek, said: “Compared to other Central Asian and post-Soviet countries, elections in Kyrgyzstan went fairly and transparently.”
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tourist numbers to Georgia are rising, the government said when it issued new data which showed that revenue from tourism rose to $430m in the second quarter of this year — a 6% increase from the same period in 2014. The government has been promoting Georgia heavily as a tourist destination.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Car imports to Azerbaijan halved in the first eight months of the year, the Azerbaijani statistics committee said. It said in Jan-Aug, Azerbaijan imported 21,147 cars, down from 39,198 in the same period in 2014. Azerbaijan’s currency has devalued this year and new regulations mean imported cars have to take a higher grade of petrol than previously, making it harder to import older cars.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 5 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Observers from Europe’s main election watchdog the OSCE said that parliamentary elections on Oct. 4 were “unique” in post-Soviet Central Asia.
At a press conference the day after the election, Ignacio Sánchez Amor, head of the short-term OSCE observer mission said: “These lively and competitive elections were unique in this region as, until 8 o’clock last night, nobody knew what the composition of the parliament would be.”
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan-based Eurasian Resources Group said it has opened two credit lines with Russian lender VTB, highlighting its need for cash during this turbulent economic period. The two loans total $352m and will be used to upgrade two aluminium plants.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)