MAY 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a decree which should change the way that sport in the country is financed, skewing funding towards high-profile sports such as football, tennis and cycling . Kazakhstan has been using sport as a way of bolstering its brand across the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijani police arrested a group of soldiers who they accuse of spying and plotting a coup backed by Armenia, with which Azerbaijan is still officially at war with over disputed Nagorno-Karabakh.
The row follows a scandal in Armenia focused on the import of apples from Azerbaijan. Trade between the two countries has, officially at least, been banned by each of the two governments. Armenian customs officials and the apple smugglers have been arrested, media said.
In Baku, the government said they had foiled the plot by a group of soldiers and civilians to launch attacks in Azerbaijan. Relations between the two neighbours have deteriorated over the past year. Last April, several dozen people were killed in the worst outbreak of fight- ing around Nagorno-Karabakh since a 1994 UN-negotiated ceasefire.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
TBILISI, MAY 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia Healthcare Group reported a surge in revenue linked to its new pharmaceuticals business, underlining its position as one of the Central Asia/South Caucasus region’s best-performing stocks.
Shortly after announcing that revenue in the first quarter of the year had more than doubled to 186.6m lari ($76.5m) from 72.6m lari in 2016, Georgia Healthcare Group shares listed on the London Stock Exchange hit 370p. This was just shy of an all-time high of 379p reached earlier this year.
In a statement Georgian Healthcare, whose core business is running hospitals and health services, said that the addition of a pharmaceutical business had boosted its revenue.
“Our key focus during the first quarter of 2017 has been to ensure the successful integration of the newly-acquired Pharmadepot business,” it said in a statement.
Georgia Healthcare said it had a 29% share of the pharmaceuticals sector. It is Georgia’s largest healthcare provider, operating over 2,500 hospital beds, 23% of the market.
Georgia’s healthcare system has been revolutionized by the Georgian Dream government who introduced a variant of the Universal Healthcare model in 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), the biggest bank in the country and vital to its economy, said it had missed interest payments on loans, another sign it is struggling to stay solvent under the weight of mounting bad debt.
Azerbaijani finance minister Samir Sharifov also appealed to creditors to be patient while IBA restructured its debt. He said the bank would not pay interest on liabilities until this process was complete.
In the US, IBA applied for protection under Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code. This protects the bank from being pursued by creditors while it restructures its debt.
Analysts have said all year that IBA is in serious danger of collapsing. In January, the government increased its stake in the bank to 76.7% from 55% in an admission that without state support the bank would fail.
Azerbaijan’s economy has been hit hard by a collapse in oil prices since 2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev travelled to China for his first visit to the country as Uzbekistan’s leader. During the three-day visit, Mr Mirziyoyev is expected to sign various headline deals with his Chinese counterparts. China has become perhaps the biggest driver of economic growth in Central Asia over the past few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Pledges to cut output and to support prices pushed up oil to $50.85/barrel, its highest in May, giving support to both the Kazakh tenge and the Azerbaijani manat. They both inched up slightly, with the tenge finishing on 315.54/$1, up nearly 1%, and the Azerbaijani manat hitting 1.6775/$1, also up around 1%.
As the graph shows, the tenge has risen by 8.6% since the start of November, giving the economy and the Central Bank much-needed breathing space. Gains since mid- February, though, have been limited and a deeper look at tenge shows that it has under performed against oil prices. The price of Brent oil has increased by 13.4% since the start of November, far outstripping tenge.
Of the other currencies, the long Victory Day holiday slowed trade and there was little movement, up or down, except with the Uzbek som. This is a tightly managed currency and the authorities have been slowing cutting its value to reflect a general slowdown in the economy. Once again, over the course of the last week, the som’s value has fallen by around 0.8%.
As for equities, it was also a fairly steady week with Centerra Gold gaining the most, up 7.5%. Caspian Sunrise stock is inelastic and changes tend to be wild.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — British fraud investigators have forced ENRC, now called Eurasian Resources Group, to hand over documents that it has said are important evidence into allegations of corruption and fraud that it is investigating surrounding the company that was previously listed on the London Stock Exchange. Prosecutors have been looking into alleged corruption at ENRC since 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan has established an ombudsman of sorts to promote business interests, media reported. Under a decree signed by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the new body will promote dialogue between businesses and various state bodies. Businesses have been urging Mr Mirziyoyev, president since September last year, to improve the business environment.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iranian officials said they were ready to sue Turkmenistan in an international arbitration court for cutting gas supplies this winter, ramping up tension between the neighbours.
The announcement highlights just how far relations between Iran and Turkmenistan have splintered since Turkmen officials said last year that Iran hadn’t paid a $1.8b bill for gas delivered in 2007 and 2008.
In a statement quoted by Iranian media, Hamid Reza Araqi, managing director of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), said Turkmenistan had failed its commitments.
“The price of gas, the damage they inflicted on Iran in winter by cutting off gas supplies, and the quality of gas delivered to Iran are three cases claimed by Iran,” he was quoted as saying. “Iran’s documents are ready to be submitted to the International Court of Arbitration.”
To some extent the row shows the strain an economic downturn has put countries and their leaders under. Before Turkmen officials accused Iran of reneging on bills, relations had been improving every month. As well as gas supplies Turkmen electricity was being imported, political links had been strengthened and there was talk of Iran providing Turkmenistan with access to the Persian Gulf through a swap system.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has offered to sell uranium to Brazil to cover a shortfall in Brazilian production, media reported quoting Kazakh deputy foreign minister Yerzhan Ashikbayev. Reports said that he had met with Brazilian officials who were looking for help to feed its two nuclear power stations with uranium. Brazil has abundant supplies of unmined uranium but miners have struggled to win environmental licenses to mine it, forcing the power stations to import most of the uranium.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)