FEB. 4 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan is testing investor sentiment towards the possible issue of either a 5-year or 10-year sovereign debt issue, Bloomberg News reported. It said that Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Gazprombank had been hired for what would be Uzbekistan’s first bond issue. Last year, Uzbekistan was given its first sovereign debt rating.
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>This story was first published in issue 399 of The Conway Bulletin on Feb. 8 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019
FEB. 7 (The Conway Bulletin) — Anglo Asian Mining, the Azerbaijan-focused gold miner, said it expected gold output to fall to 65,000-67,500 ounces in 2019, down from 72,798 ounces in 2018. The announcement immediately triggered a fall in the price of Anglo Asian Mining’s share on the London Stock Exchange. It had been one of the top performers in 2018. >>See Markets on page 8 for more
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>This story was first published in issue 399 of The Conway Bulletin on Feb. 8 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019
FEB. 6 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s government said that it will open its first embassy in Qatar by the end of the year. A handful of unverified news reports said that the Qatari government was to pay the running costs of the embassy for the first three years.
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>This story was first published in issue 399 of The Conway Bulletin on Feb. 8 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019
FEB. 5 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan signed a deal with Liberty Media, the owners of the Formula 1 franchise, to hold an F1 Grand Prix in Baku for the next five years. The Baku F1 race has become an important part of Azerbaijan’s national branding since it first hosted it, as the European Grand Prix, in 2016. >>See Comment on page 2
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>This story was first published in issue 399 of The Conway Bulletin on Feb. 8 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019
ALMATY/Feb. 4 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev set off speculation over an early presidential election and possibly the start of a succession process when he asked the Constitutional Court for clarification over the implications of cutting short his 5-year presidential term.
The 78-year-old leader has been Kazakh president since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union but has not named a successor or laid out how his succession issues are to be dealt with.
In a Feb. 5 broadcast on national TV, though, Mr Nazarbayev said that he simply wanted to know how a president is released from office and that he had no intention of quitting.
“The president has a right to announce an early presidential election, but that is not the case at this point,” he said.
Mr Nazarbayev won an election in 2015 with 97.7% of the vote.
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>This story was first published in issue 399 of The Conway Bulletin on Feb. 8 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019
FEB. 4 (The Conway Bulletin) — Hungarian budget airline Wizz Air said it would start up flights to Basel, Copenhagen, Brussels, Tallinn, Eindhoven and Bari from its base at Kutaisi in Georgia. Wizz Air is credited with bringing mass tourism from Europe to Georgia since it set up a base at Kutaisi in 2016. It already operates flights to 21 European destinations from Kutaisi.
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>This story was first published in issue 399 of The Conway Bulletin on Feb. 8 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019
ALMATY/Feb. 6 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in west Kazakhstan surprised observers by acquitting a woman of using social media to promote the banned Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan opposition party.
The acquittal of 39-year-old Aigul Akberdiyeva came five months after her husband 45-year-old Ablovas Zhumaev was sent to prison for four years on similar charges. Human rights activists had highlighted both their cases as evidence of Kazakhstan’s lack of freedom and how the security services were monitoring Facebook and other sites for anti-government comments.
It is rare in Kazakhstan for an accused person to be acquitted of their alleged crimes by a judge. The sentencing of her husband on similar charges makes it even more remarkable that Ms Akberdiyeva was allowed to walk away from the court a free woman.
The Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan is the party of opposition fugitive leader Mukhtar Ablyazov.
During her trial, Ms Akberdiyeva, a mother of four, said that she thought the social situation in Kazakhstan was dire and that she did not support the government. She argued, though, that she had not called for the overthrow of the government and that instead all she had done was express her opinion through Facebook.
And there were other signs this week that other ordinary Kazakhs agreed with Ms Akberdiyeva’s assessment of the economy in Kazakhstan and the quality of life for ordinary people. Media reported that several protests, rare in Kazakhstan, had broken out in cities across the country against the government’s attitude towards working parents after five young girls died in a house fire in Astana on Feb. 4 while both their parents were away working nightshifts.
Dozens of people attended the girls’ funerals the following day and on Feb. 6 hundreds of demonstrators rallied in Astana to demand the resignation of labour and social protection minister Madina Abylqasymova.
They also want more benefits for working mothers and were frustrated that no national day of mourning was called.
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>This story was first published in issue 399 of The Conway Bulletin on Feb. 8 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019
FEB. 4 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Afghan company building part of the CASA-1000 power-line that will link Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with Pakistan said the project will be delayed for eight months because of a delay in deals to build substations in Pakistan and Tajikistan. CASA-1000 is being funded primarily by the World Bank and it is considered a vital project for the economies of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It was meant to be finished at the end of 2018.
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>This story was first published in issue 399 of The Conway Bulletin on Feb. 8 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019
FEB. 1 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan jailed a policeman for 13 years for a series of crimes, including torture, in a rare case that highlights corruption and abuse of power in the security forces in Central Asia. AFP reported that a closed court in the northern city of Khujand jailed Shukhrat Shamsiddinov at the end of January for torturing and extorting money from Komil Khodjanazarov, detained in 2017 for belonging to a banned group. Khodjanazarov was released from detention but killed himself when he was summoned to return to the police station for questioning. Human rights activists say torture is rife in Tajik prisons.
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>This story was first published in issue 399 of The Conway Bulletin on Feb. 8 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019
JAN. 31 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan has lifted the ban on studying political science at university, Reuters reported, another indicator of how the country has opened up under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. The Reuters report said universities had dropped political science in 2013 as it was deemed to be promoting theories counter to then-President Islam Karimov’s “Uzbek model”.
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>This story was first published in issue 399 of The Conway Bulletin on Feb. 8 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019