DEC. 25 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov promised to improve ties at a meeting in Bishkek. Relations between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan strained in October during a Kyrgyz presidential election when outgoing Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev accused Mr Nazarbayev of trying to meddle.
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— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin
DEC. 27 (The Conway Bulletin) — China’s Goldwind Science and Technology has won an order to build a wind power plant in Kazakhstan, it said. The 5MW plant will be built near Almaty and shows both Kazakhstan’s drive to develop green energy and also the increasing influence of China on the region’s commerce. The contract was given to Goldwind Science by China’s CITIC, the main contractor for the wind power plant. CITIC is a major constructor in Kazakhstan.
— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin
DEC. 25 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan flew to Tbilisi for talks with his Georgian counterpart Giorgi Margvelashvili that both sides described as “wide-ranging”. From Tbilisi, Mr Sargsyan was heading to Moscow for an informal meeting of heads of states of CIS countries. Armenia’s diplomacy in the South Caucasus is delicate. It needs to cultivate good relations with Georgia to counter its enemies Azerbaijan and Turkey. Georgia, though, through pipeline politics is increasingly close to Ankara and Baku.
ENDS
— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin
DEC. 27 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia Healthcare Group (GHG), which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, said it had bought another clinic in Tbilisi, part of its strategy to buy up clinics across the country. The clinic is the second one it now owns in the Mtatsminda area of Tbilisi. As well as owning a growing network of clinics, GHG runs hospitals and pharmacies.
— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin
DEC. 22 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia is, apparently, looking at potentially funding hydropower projects in Kyrgyzstan two years after it pulled out of a $700m deal to finance the development of the Kambar-Ata-1 hydropower station and four smaller projects along the Upper Naryn River. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty quoted Russian deputy PM Arkady Dvorkovich as hinting that Russia was looking again at potential projects. Kyrgyzstan has not found an alternative funder for the Upper Naryn river projects since Russia pulled out.
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— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin
DEC. 23 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) is on target to deliver the first gas from Azerbaijan by 2020 despite protests from locals in Italy who have said that the $5.3b project will destroy ancient landscapes, Walter Peeraer, the TAP chairman, told Reuters. TAP is the final leg of a pipeline system dubbed the Southern Gas Corridor that central Europe is banking on to deliver gas from the Caspian Sea, reducing its reliance on Russia. The main gas supplier for the $40b Southern Gas Corridor is Azerbaijan’s BP-run Shah Deniz II.
— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin
JAN. 5 (The Conway Bulletin) — KAZ Minerals, the Kazakhstan-focused copper producer, was the biggest riser on the FTSE 350, according to the Times newspaper. It nearly doubled its share price in 2017 as the stock market bet on the price of copper.
The KAZ Minerals success story was something of an anomaly for the region. Central Asia Metals, its Kazakhstan metal producer bedfellow, barely broke even. The market judged its buy-up of a Macedonian zinc miner earlier in the year to be the wrong move.
And Centerra Gold, the Toronto-listed miner, also failed to shift significantly despite apparently making peace with the authorities in Kyrgyzstan over the status of the Kumtor mine. It shares dropped by 10% on Dec. 27 after it said that it had had to stop production at a mine in British Columbia because of a lack of water.
— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin
TBILISI, DEC. 26/27 (The Conway Bulletin) — — Police in Georgia arrested five men in Tbilisi and the Pankisi Gorge who, they said, were linked to the IS extremist network and had helped arm a group of militants who fought police for several hours during a raid in Tbilisi in November.
In November, three militants were killed and one security service agent died in a raid on a flat on the outskirts of Tbilisi.
Separately, the Turkish authorities said that they had also arrested a Georgian national on suspicion of being linked to IS.
The Pankisi Gorge in the north of Georgia is renowned as a hideout for Islamic fighters. It was considered a safe place for Chechen fighters battling Russian forces in the early 2000s. More recently it has proved a fairly fertile recruitment ground for IS.
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— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin
JAN 3 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia will buy almost 100% of its gas supplies from Azerbaijan this year, officials told local media, completing a total switch from Russia-supplied gas. The announcement is, effectively, a continuation of a policy laid out in May last year when Georgia’s then-energy minister Kakha Kaladze said that Georgia would stop buying Russian gas. He had earlier switched the way that Georgia imported Russian gas from a barter deal to a paid-for deal.
— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin
JAN 4 (The Conway Bulletin) — Brandy production in Armenia, something of a bellwether for the state of the wider FSU economy, increased by 41% between January and end-November to 27.9m litres, official statistics showed. This comes on top of a 27% increase for the same period in 2016 compared to 2015. Powered by Russia and oil prices, the FSU economies are recovering from a slump in 2014-16.
— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin