Author Archives: Editor

Kyrgyz authorities interferring with labour unions, says HRW

DEC. 22 2020 (The Bulletin) — The authorities in Kyrgyzstan are intimidating leaders of Kyrgyzstan’s worker unions and are trying to interfere with how they operate, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said. Unions in Kyrgyzstan are considered influential, with thousands of members. After three coups in 15 years, Kyrgyzstan has something of a reputation for indulging in street-level politics.

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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

Carrefour opens first store in Uzbekistan

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TASHKENT/DEC. 22 2020 (The Bulletin) — Carrefour, the French hypermarket brand, opened its first store in Tashkent, part of a plan to open up seven in the Uzbek capital.

Majid Al Futtaim, the Dubai-based retail and leisure franchise operator, said that the store would offer Tashkent residents their first access to a major European supermarket brand and all its products.

“As one of the most recognised retail brands in the world, Carrefour introduces an elevated shopping experience to the Uzbek market through its international standards and retail best practices, customer service, and best in-store hygiene processes,” Majid Al Futtaim said in a statement.

The coronavirus pandemic, though, appears to have dented Majid Al Futtaim’s ambitions. In 2019, it promised to open four stores by the end of 2020 in Uzbekistan and another three by the end of 2021.

Majid Al Futtaim has opened Carrefour stores in Armenia, Georgia and Kazakhstan over the past few years. The Carrefour store in Almaty was closed in 2017, 15 months after it opened, because of a lack of interest from shoppers.

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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

Tajikistan is facing most serious drought ever, says deputy PM

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DEC. 22 2020 (The Bulletin) — Davlatali Said, Tajikistan’s deputy PM, said that the country was facing the most serious drought on record. The statement was an unusually candid one by a senior member of the Tajik government on the water shortages in Tajikistan’s reservoirs that have dented power generation at its hydropower stations. Tajikistan is trying to set itself up as a major regional power exporter.

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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

Kazakhtan begins production of Russian Covid vaccine

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DEC. 21 2020 (The Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has started production of Sputnik-V, the Russian vaccine for Covid-19, Russian officials said. This could mean that Kazakhstan, and other countries in Central Asia, will receive batches of the vaccine more quickly. Media reports said that the first batch of the vaccine had been sent off to Russia for quality checks.

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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

Georgia produced chemicals that exploded in Beirut

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TBILISI/AUG.4 (The Bulletin) — Rustavi Azot, Georgia’s largest industrial enterprise, has
been named as the producer in 2013 of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate
that has now exploded in Beirut, killing 145 people and damaging large
parts of the city.

Its management, backed up by Georgian ministers, though said that
the chemicals had been safe when it was loaded on to The Rhosus, a cargo
ship, in its Black Sea port of Batumi and that the fault for the explosion
lies with the authorities in Beirut.

“Rustavi Azot is one of the country’s largest exporter companies
and produces up to 1% of the world’s total ammonium nitrate
consumption,” it said. “The company produces, stores and exports its
products having required licenses and permissions and in compliance with
all applicable national and international standards.”

The Soviet-era plant near Tbilisi employs 2,000 people and is the only
ammonium nitrate producer in the South Caucasus. Over the past half a
decade, the Georgian government has promoted Rustavi Azot and talked up
its exports and in 2016, the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development led an international consortium of banks with a $155m
loan designed to help modernise the plant.

There had even been talk at the time of the EBRD taking a stake in
Rustavi Azot, although this does not appear to have materialised.
In its statement, Rustavi Azot was also careful to point out that new
management has been running the plant for the past three years and
shouldn’t be held responsible for previous deals.

But questions will still be asked as to how more than half the plant’s
annual production of ammonium nitrate in 2013 could be loaded onto
the Rhosus, which was sailing under the flag of landlocked Moldova and
was owned by Russian Igor Grechushkin.

Ammonium nitrate is mainly used as a fertiliser but can also be used to
produce cheap explosives and the Rhosus had been bound for an arms
factory in Mozambique when it was diverted to Beirut and its cargo impounded.

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— This story was first published in issue 456 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin on Aug. 9 2020

Markets: Stocks drop across the region

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JULY 31 (The Bulletin) — With the exception of the region’s two main listed gold miners, Centerra Gold and Anglo Asian Mining, and also TBC Bank, which analysts said gained ground because it had been oversold in the past few weeks, stocks in the Central Asia and South Caucasus region fell.

They generally tracked stock markets around the world which dipped with business confidence. Confidence has been hit by the prospect of a second wave of coronavirus infections and deaths.

The biggest fallers were Bank of Georgia, down 8.6%, and Georgia Healthcare, down 7.1%, but even KAZ Minerals, the Kazakhstan-focused copper producer, which presented a decent set of Q2 figures traded down.

Gold miners rose because, with investors getting increasingly nervous, gold price also rose.

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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Comment: Human rights in the region are worsening

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JULY 31 (The Bulletin) — If there was doubt about the direction of travel for media and human rights in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, the past fortnight has dispelled it.

First Tajikistan and Azerbaijan teamed up to block a second term for two highly thought-of senior officials at the Office for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Solrun Gisladottir, as head of its vote monitoring unit ODHIR, and Harlem Desir, the OSCE’s media representative. All 57 members of the OSCE have to agree on each of the key appointments and Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, with some support from Turkey, said that Desir and Gisladottir had been biased against them.

In truth, Desir and Gisladottir had just been clear on calling out Tajikistan and Azerbaijan for what they are. Serial abuses of democratic principles, media freedom and civil rights.

And then there is also the death in a Kyrgyz prison of Azimzhan Askarov. He was an ethnic Uzbek whose mistake was to irritate the Kyrgyz authorities in the south of the country in the years before inter-ethnic fighting broke out in 2010. The police in Kyrgyzstan are dominated by ethnic Kyrgyz and Askarov accused them of bias against Uzbeks, torture and abuse.

He was arrested in the aftermath of the fighting in 2010 and accused of murdering a policeman. Human rights groups and Western diplomats said that the charges were fabricated but their protests were ignored and Askarov was imprisoned for life.

Even when it was clear that Askarov was gravely ill, the authorities in Kyrgyzstan refused to grant him any clemency. Human Rights Watch accused the Kyrgyz authorities of wanting Askarov to die in prison.

So, there we have it. Tajikistan and Azerbaijan undermine one of the more effective on-the-ground peace-making organisations and Kyrgyzstan targets an annoying Uzbek human rights activist to die in one of its prisons.

Myopic, narcissistic and nihilist, their true colours have been visible for all to see over the past fortnight.

The region is less stable without an effective OSCE and less equitable without Askarov.

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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Markets: Kazakh tenge drops value

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JULY 31 (The Bulletin) — The Kazakh tenge was the main mover over the past week, dropping nearly 2% in value against the US dollar to trade at 421.8/$1, its lowest value since the start of May.

Analysts blamed the sharp drop in the value of the tenge on Kazakhstan’s worsening economic outlook, an outlook dimmed by the spread of the coronavirus. The Kazakh government has continually delayed the relaxation of coronavirus lockdown rules and a recession that analysts had anticipated, with GDP contracting by 5%, now looks like wishful thinking. Kazakhstan also reduced its key interest rate in June, stripping the tenge of some of its support.

Before the coronavirus infected economies, the tenge had been valued at around 380/$1. It fell to an all-time low of 456/$1.

Elsewhere, governments maintained the value of their currencies by selling their US dollar reserves.

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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Georgian economy shrinks by 6%

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JULY 31 (The Bulletin) — Georgia’s economy was 5.8% smaller by the end of June compared to the same period in 2019 because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, official data showed. This is in line with previous estimates for a coronavirus-linked recession. In the first six months of 2019, Georgia’s economy had grown by 4.9%.

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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Kcell posts sales rise for H1

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JULY 30 (The Bulletin) — Kcell, Kazakhstan’s biggest mobile operator, said that sales increased by 7.7% in the first six months of the year, compared to the same time last year, despite the coronavirus pandemic.. It also said that net income was up by 17.8%. Results from Kcell, which is owned by the state-owned Kazakhtelecom, are watched as they are considered important indicators on the health of the Kazakh economy.

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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.