JAN. 30 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s economy grew by an estimated 2.2% in 2016, the slowest growth rate since 2009, media reported quoting the statistics service. This was a drop from 2.9% in 2015 and 4.6% in 2014. Georgia, like the rest of the region, has been trying to deal with an economic slowdown linked to a recession in Russia and an overly strong US dollar.
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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
JAN. 29 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev opened the 28th Winter University Olympiad in Almaty, an event that he said was the biggest sporting event ever held in Kazakhstan. The Olympiad is important to Kazakhstan as a way of promoting itself on the international stage. This year it also hosts EXPO-2017 in Astana, an event it has been planning for years.
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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In its full year results, Nostrum Oil & Gas, which focuses on Kazakhstan said that it had just beaten its expected output with an average daily output of 40,351/barrels of oil equivalent (boe) compared to an anticipated 40,000 boe. It said that the final quarter of the year had been the best with 44,708 boe.
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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Caspian Pipeline Consortium plans to invest $150m in 2017 in expanding the capacity of the pipeline that pumps oil from western Kazakhstan around the northern tip of the Caspian Sea to Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, its general director Nikolay Gorban told media. The expansion plan will boost the pipeline’s capacity to 67m tonnes per year, up from 52m tonnes. This is important because CPC is a key export route for Kazakhstan and especially for its important Tengiz field.
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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
FEB. 1 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Reports have appeared in Kyrgyz media that a cargo plane which crashed into a village next to Manas airport last month was carrying iphones and other electronic equipment in a smuggling operation based at the airport. Eyewitnesses also told the RFE/RL website that some of the first members of the emergency services looted the crash site. “One policeman took off his shirt and filled it with mobile phones,” RFE/RL quoted a young boy as saying.
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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
JAN. 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The CEO of Swedish mobile operator Telia, Johan Dennelind, said that he was confident that he would be able to sell off the company’s remaining assets in its Eurasia region this year. Interest in Telia’s regional asset which include Azercell, Geocell, Ucell, Kcell and Tcell have been light. A corruption scandal in Uzbekistan, linked to a 2008 bribe, triggered the sale.
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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
ALMATY, FEB 2, 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in western Kazakhstan are trying to intimidate workers into giving up their hunger strikes, the Eurasianet website reported.
The Eurasianet report quoted workers as saying that a breakdown in trust with the authorities was pushing them towards a potentially violent confrontation.
“We cannot allow another Zhanaozen,” Eurasianet quoted a lawyer for a detained union leader as saying. Zhanaozen is the town in western Kazakhstan where police and strikers clashed in 2011. At least 15 people died.
Several hundred oil workers have been refusing to eat in west Kazakhstan in protest over the closure of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions, an umbrella organization, by a court in Shymkent at the beginning of the year. The hunger strikers’ de facto leaders, Amin Yeleusinov, and Nurbek Kushakbaev were arrested on Jan. 20
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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
ALMATY, FEB. 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a surprise move, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked his longtime ally Imangali Tasmagambetov as deputy PM and sent him to Moscow to be Kazakhstan’s ambassador to Russia.
The shift from central government to the diplomatic corps is a humiliating end to Mr Tamagambetov’s political career.
He had been a PM, mayor of both Almaty and Astana and also been the minister of defence. The 60-year-old Tasmagambetov is popular with ordinary Kazakhs and had been touted by analysts as a potential successor to Mr Nazarbayev as president.
Mr Nazarbayev gave no reason for Mr Tasmagambetov’s demotion.
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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
FEB. 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh tenge moved to $325.5/$1, its highest value against the US dollar since December 2015. The main drivers of this strengthened currency are oil prices and a more consistent and credible economic policy coming out of the Central Bank.
In January last year, the tenge bottomed-out at 381/$1. This was when oil prices were hovering at under $30/barrel, after Iran said it would start exporting oil as soon as US-lead sanctions were lifted, and confidence in Kazakhstan’s economic policies were at an all- time low after a bungled defence and then a sudden devaluation of the tenge.
Now oil prices are back up around $55 and Daniyar Akishev is heading the Central Bank. He took over from the hapless, indecisive
Kairat Kelimbetov in November 2015. It hasn’t been all easy for Akishev, but things are definitely looking up now. This year alone, the Kazakh tenge has outperformed its regional peers and risen by 3%.
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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
FEB. 1 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Two Soviet-era Mi-24 military helicopters crewed by Georgians and Belarusians collided on the border of Rwanda and Uganda, media reported. The Georgian ministry of defence said that the Georgian crew were working privately and were not employees of the Georgian military. It’s unclear how serious the crews’ injuries are. The incident does highlight the use of contractors from Georgia and other parts of the former Soviet Union who were trained to fly Soviet planes and helicopters.
FEB. 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) —
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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)