Author Archives: Editor

ADB funds road-building in Tajikistan

DEC. 29 2020 (The Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank agreed a $67m grant with Tajikistan to build two sections of road in Khatlon, a region south of Dushanbe. Media said that the roads currently carry 4,000 vehicles per day. Infrastructure improvement has been a major feature of development in Tajikistan, with China funding much of the work.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

British Army studies Azerbaijan’s victory against Armenia

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DEC. 29 2020 (The Bulletin) — The British Army is studying Azerbaijan’s victory in a war with Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh last year as a template for future conflicts, the Guardian newspaper reported. It said that the British Army was impressed with Azerbaijan’s use of Turkish drones.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Kazatomprom sells stake in subsidiary to China

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ALMATY/DEC. 29 2020 (The Bulletin) — — Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom, the world’s biggest uranium miner, agreed to sell China’s CGN a 49% stake in one of its most important subsidiaries as part of a contract to boost bilateral cooperation in the sector.

Under the deal, signed between 2014 and 2016, China will commit to funding the construction of a nuclear fuel assembly plant in Kazakhstan and will guarantee orders for these fuel assemblies for the next 20 years.

Kazatomprom said that the coronavirus pandemic had slowed construction of the Ulba Fuel Assembly Plant in the east of the country but that the project was now back on track.

“Under the current ramp-up and product qualification plan, and assuming no further delays, the first production from the Ulba-FA plant is expected near the end of 2021, with first delivery of finished, certified fuel assemblies to the customer in 2022,” Kazatomprom said in a statement.

China is the world’s biggest growth market for nuclear power and a natural marketplace for Kazatomprom’s uranium. Fuel assemblies are enriched uranium rods grouped together to generate power for power stations.

The deal highlights the trade co-dependency of the two neighbours and also how China is continuing to increase its ownership of Kazakh industry.

China has been buying up many of Kazakhstan’s top industrial assets, especially in the oil and gas and the mineral and mining sectors, for the past 15 years or so.

The Kazatomprom subsidiary that CGN, which stands for China General Nuclear Power Group, has agreed to take a 49% in, as part of the fuel assembly supply deal, is called Ortalyk.

It owns two uranium deposits in Kazakhstan, the Central Mynkuduk Deposit and the Zhalpak Deposit. The deal is expected to be completed by the middle of 2021.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Fighting breaks out in Nagorno-Karabakh

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DEC. 28 2020 (The Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s army blamed an Armenian group for attacking one of its units and killing a soldier in Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian officials said there had been sporadic fighting in the region but denied that its forces had attacked Azerbaijani forces. Azerbaijan took control of most of Nagorno-Karabakh after a Russia-imposed peace deal ended a war last year.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Bank opens ATM in Nagorno-Karabakh

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DEC. 27 2020 (The Bulletin) — In a move heavily infused with symbolism, state-owned International Bank of Azerbaijan opened its first cash machine in Shusha, the largest town taken by Azerbaijani forces from Armenia during a six-week war for control of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh that ended in November. Azerbaijani business has rushed to follow soldiers and open up operations in the region.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Berdymukhamedov says chewing liquorice stops Covid

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DEC. 26 2020 (The Bulletin) — Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said that chewing liquorice is a cure for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Mr Berdymukhamedov made the statement in televised remarks to his ministers. Turkmenistan is one of the only countries in the world to still deny that it has had any cases of the coronavirus.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Trial begins of manslaughter over dam collapse

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DEC. 25 2020 (The Bulletin) — Uzbekistan’s Supreme Court began the trial for manslaughter through negligence of eight men who built and designed a dam in the north of the country that burst in 2020, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, forcing 70,000 people to flee their homes and killing six people. The case is being closely watched in Uzbekistan. Officials said that they suspected that corruption was partly to blame for the failure of the dam, which was finished in 2017.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

EBRD and World Bank lend for Uzbek solar project

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DEC. 23 2020 (The Bulletin) — The EBRD, the ADB and the World Bank agreed to lend the Uzbek government $125m to finance its first solar power project. The plant is being built in Uzbekistan’s industrial heartland in Navoi by Masdar, an Abdu Dhabi company and will produce 270 gigawatt hours of energy per year, which Bloomberg said was enough to power 31,000 households.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Kyrgyzstan’s MPs vote in amnesty for corrupt wealth

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BISHKEK/DEC. 23 2020 (The Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted into law an amnesty for people who enriched themselves through corruption and theft in exchange for giving some of their assets to the state.

Supporters of the government’s amnesty said that it will boost resources and also cut the size of the shadow economy. Its detractors, though, said that the main aim was to provide cover for Raimbek Matraimov, the former deputy head of Kyrgyzstan’s customs service, who is accused of corruption and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mr Matraimov, whose assets have been frozen in the United States, has, it has been reported, already agreed to pay back 2b som ($25m).

Analysts have said that the Kyrgyz elite may be so eager to give protection to Mr Matraimov because he could easily implicate others.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

The Caspian Sea is shrinking, warn scientists

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ALMATY/DEC. 23 2020 (The Bulletin) — The Caspian Sea, which provides a livelihood for thousands of people and acts as a fulcrum for international transit routes through the Central Asia and South Caucasus region, is shrinking, new scientific research showed (Dec. 23).

The report produced by universities in Germany and the Netherlands said that the Caspian Sea could lose up to a third of its water by 2100, with water level dropping by 18m, marooning previously important ports hundreds of kilometres inland.

The report’s authors said they wanted to use the threat to the Caspian Sea to highlight the dangers of global warming to inland seas and lakes.

“A massive warning signal is the projected catastrophic drop in water levels for the Caspian Sea, the largest lake in the world, which could hit stakeholders unprepared,” the report said.

Previous studies have warned that the Caspian Sea has been shrinking since the 1990s but not this quickly.

Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan border the Caspian Sea, which lies at the centre of a series of transport corridors that ultimately connect East Asia with Europe.

The Caspian Sea also hosts the region’s oil and gas industry and is a wildlife reserve, supporting seals, and migratory birds. The report showed how vast areas of the northern section of the Caspian Sea could dry up, with Atyrau in Kazakhstan effectively being stranded hundreds of kilometres from the shore.

Central Asia’s reputation for ecological disasters is already secure with the shrinking of the Aral Sea, which is shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. It shrank in the 1960s and 1970s to half its original size because of Soviet schemes to siphon off its tributaries to irrigate cotton fields.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin