SEPT. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Finnish-based Wärtsilä won a tender to build a 40MW combined heat and power (CHP) plant near the Caspian port of Aktau, in west Kazakhstan. The Kazakh company KazAzot will manage the plant, which Wärtsilä plans to complete in late 2016. The plant will power the city of Aktau and its industrial hub.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iran Khodro Industrial Group (IKCO) will export 500 cars to Tajikistan later this year as a test run ahead of potentially investing in a production site, Iranian media reported. The private company based in Tehran manufactures the Samand brand of family cars. Saeed Tafazzoli, the company’s deputy CEO, said he wants to take the brand into Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia energy minister Kakhaber Kaladze met up with Gazprom chairman Alexei Miller in Brussels to discuss Georgia’s role as a client and transit country for Russian gas. Media didn’t give details of the meeting but it did speculate that Georgia may be looking for help from the Kremlin to fill its energy deficit.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
BISHKEK, SEPT. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Alluding to concerns about the impact of the Kremlin-lead Eurasian Economic Union, Kyrgyzstan’s deputy PM Vladimir Dil said cheap products from Russia and Kazakhstan have been flooding the market.
Many politicians and government officials in Kyrgyzstan were sceptical in August about the benefits of joining the trade block that includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia. Some said that the Kremlin views the Eurasian Economic Union as a political project and that it pressured Kyrgyzstan, which has become increasingly reliant on Russia for economic and military support, into joining.
Now Mr Dil has stepped out and seemingly openly criticised the Eurasian Economic Union.
“We are seeing a very large flow of goods from Kazakhstan and Russia to our side. The changes in the exchange rates of the rouble and the tenge has turned goods in markets of our allies far cheaper than ours,” Mr Dil said. He didn’t explicitly mention the Eurasian Economic Union but the inference was clear. Kazakhstan cut its peg to a US dollar towards the end of August. The Kazakh tenge immediately lost around a quarter of its value.
A large drop in the value of the tenge and entry to the Eurasian Economic Union, it appears, has exposed Kyrgyzstan to cheap imports.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh lender BTA Bank completed the buyout of its shares from Samruk- Kazyna by buying the final 4.26% stake that Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund owned in it. Samruk-Kazyna bought BTA to save it from collapse during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/9. Over the past year, Kazkommertsbank, another Kazakh bank, has merged with BTA Bank.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian state-owned company Gazprom started supplying natural gas to Azerbaijan. Initial volumes stand at 6m cubic metres per day, the contract between the two parties envisages a maximum yearly supply of 2b cubic metres. Azerbaijan said the contract was struck because of economic growth and an increase in domestic consumption.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
OCT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – So the fate of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) appears to have been sealed by the country’s highest court. It is, apparently, a terrorist organisation that helped plan a couple of attacks last month on police checkpoints which killed two dozen people.
A former deputy defence minister has been named as the mastermind of the attacks but the IRPT also played an important role, the court said.
This is the culmination of a ramping up of pressure on the IRPT this year. Its leaders have been forced out of the country, some of its top Dushanbe-based officials have been attacked in the street and various courts have banned it for, firstly not being big enough and secondly for its involvement in the September attacks.
To really prove its case, the Tajik judiciary needs to release more concrete evidence to the international community of the IRPT’s apparent involvement in the attacks. At the moment it just doesn’t stack up.
Instead, as an analyst told the Bulletin’s correspondent in Dushanbe, it feels like a blatant attack on political opponents.
This is dangerous for Tajikistan. What Tajikistan needs is a moderate opposition group that is going to challenge the authorities and President Emomali Rakhmon through the normal channels. What it’ll get instead, with the crushing of opposition groups, is a vacuum that radical Islamists can exploit.
Tajikistan stands at a cross- roads. By banning the IRPT, the authorities are disenfranchising part of its population and taking another step along the wrong path.
By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
OCT. 2 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — By the standards of Kyrgyzstan’s febrile politics, the build up to its Oct. 4 parliamentary election has been calm but an often disinterested public and frustration over biometric data requirements have tarnished the vote.
Five years ago, in the aftermath of a revolution that ousted the unpopular Kurmanbek Bakiyev and the switch to a parliamentary democracy, it was a very different story. The mood was positive.
Now, ordinary Kyrgyz say that the political elite have gripped the political process making it less transparent and more self-serving.
“I am disappointed in representativeness of political parties, there are no parties for which I can vote,” said 23-year old Atabek, a student.
His friend, Temirlan, agreed.
“I wont go as there is no party in which I could be confident,” he said. As well as the usual complaints over the quality of the candidates, controversy has focused on requirements set out by the Kyrgyz Central Election Committee which insisted that people had to submit various personal data to the authorities before they could vote. Roughly a third of the population failed to register for the vote.
Still, some voters are upbeat.
Jenish, a 45-year-old taxi driver waiting for clients in a main Bishkek street said: “I will go to elections to fulfil my civic duty.”
Another Bishkek resident, 32-year old Mira, was excited about voting.
“I will vote for a party where a leader is a young and successful businessman,” she said.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen president Kuyrbanguly Berdymukhamedov is a man of many achievements. Not only is he a self- styled father figure for the Turkmen people but he is also a champion jockey and a leading intellectual.
Now, is appears, that he can add to this list the status of feted international botanist.
Official Turkmen media reported that at a book fair in Ashgabat, South Korean diplomats praised Mr Berdymukhamedov, a dentist by training, for producing a third volume of his book ‘Medical plants of Turkmenistan’.
Like the first two volumes of ‘Medical plants of Turkmenistan’ this book has already been translated into Korean and distributed to libraries around the country, South Korean diplomats were quoted as saying.
And the Turkmen media had more.
“Speakers at the presentation emphasised the importance of research work by the head of the Turkmen State into healing properties of plants,” it reported, adding that Mr Berdymukhamedov’s research had been translated dozens of times.
As well as the research, there may, of course be another reason for the South Korean interest in Mr Berdymukhamedov’s books. South Korean is an important investor in Turkmenistan’s economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an interview with a local newspaper, an official from Pakistan’s ministry of water and power said it was $142m short of its promised $297m investment for the so called CASA- 1000 power transit project. This is a serious concern for the project which is set to cost a total of $1.2b. If completed it will boost Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan power exports to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)