FEB. 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The value of Kazakhstan’s exports fell by 20% in 2016, the Central Bank said, reflecting just how heavily the drop in oil prices has hit the country. It said that exports dropped to $37.2b. In 2016, the average price of a barrel of Brent oil was $42.80. In 2015 it had been $50.80. This year, oil prices have hovered around $55/barrel.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
BISHKEK, FEB. 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s finance ministry laid off 220 employees to try and ease costs so that it can battle through a deep, and long, economic downturn.
Senior officials from the ministry defended the layoffs as part of a so- called “optimisation process” but in reality this was a simple cost cutting exercise and more evidence that the Kyrgyz economy is under strain. The cuts were aimed at low and mid ranking staff, often in regional offices.
Finance minister Adylbek Kasymaliev said: “As a result of optimisation, we will save between 30m and 60m som ($435,000 to $870,000).”
Kyrgyzstan is suffering from a recession in Russia, linked to the collapse in oil prices, which has destroyed jobs for migrants. Along with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan is one of the world’s most remittance-dependent countries.
Independent expert and head of the public council under the ministry of finance, Bakyt Satybekov, told the Conway Bulletin that the finance ministry, and other public bodies, had become bloated.
“It is good that the government optimised personnel at the ministry of finance and its subordinate authorities, it should have done this a long time ago to avoid duplication (of jobs) and to save money,” he said.
Mr Satybekov’s job lies outside central government. He is charged with monitoring the performance of the finance ministry.
Kyrgyzstan is not alone in slashing budgets and costs. Georgia has laid off mid-ranking Georgian army officers and Azerbaijan has slashed various social projects, such as a rural internet roll-out.
On the streets of Bishkek the layoffs were greeted with wry bewilderment. Surely, most people that a Conway Bulletin correspondent spoke to said, it would be better to fire the heads of the departments.
“It would be better to fire heads of some departments and their deputies in the ministry who secure their places for years rather than firing ordinary people from the regions,” said Jeenbek, a Bishkek resident.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The United States warned Azerbaijan that it shouldn’t try to force the closure of the OSCE office in Yerevan, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website reported. It said that Azerbaijan may be trying to close Europe’s main security and democracy watchdog after it voted against extending its mission because it was based in Yerevan. The OSCE is heavily involved with monitoring a ceasefire around Nagorno-Karabakh, disputed between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Azerbaijan closed the OSCE office in Baku in 2015.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Baku has applied to host the 2019 UEFA Champions League final, one of the world’s most-watched sporting events, at its Olympic Stadium. Baku’s Olympic Stadium is already one of the designated hosts for the 2020 European Football Championship. If Baku did win the right to host the 2019 UEFA Champions League final, Azerbaijan would be the first country to host it without ever having had a team compete in it.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — WorldRemit, a money wire service, said that it had extended its services to Armenia and Kazakhstan as well as Ukraine and Belarus, through a partnership with the Russian payment system Contact. Previously, London-based WorldRemit has concentrated its services in southeast Asia and Africa. It said that WorldRemit will operate 330 service points in Kazakhstan and 65 in Armenia. Remittances are a vital plank of the economies of Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
BATUMI/Georgia, FEB. 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s National Centre for Education Quality Enhancement (NCEQE) stripped the Batumi Refaiddin Şahin Friendship School, operated by a Gulen-affiliated group, of its operating licence, triggering accusations of playing politics.
The school was opened in 1994 and was one of the first Gulen-affiliated school to open in Georgia.Officially, its license is now being revoked due to violations of the student’s enrolment code but others have said that the Georgian government is bowing to pressure from Turkey which blames the Gulen movement for plotting a coup last year.
Elguja Davitadze, director of the Batumi Refaiddin Şahin Friendship School, said the authorities appeared determined to close down the school. “Georgia’s Education Ministry told us to abolish the Turkish section (of the school’s intake) if we wanted to keep our accreditation. We agreed to abolish the Turkish sector gradually, by transferring Turkish students to the Georgian sector, but the ministry said this was a violation and revoked our accreditation,” he was quoted by local media as saying.
He also said education inspectors had been hovering around the school for months, carrying out inspections.
If the Batumi Refaiddin Şahin Friendship School is closed down it will, possibly, be the first Gulen-run school in the country to close since Turkey started putting pressure on its neighbours in Central Asia and the South Caucasus to shut them. In many countries, the Gulen schools of the 1990s are still some of the best.
Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have so far refused to close them while Azerbaijan, one of Turkey closest neighbours, has appeared eager to please.
Shota Utiashvili, a Senior Fellow at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, said that although the Turkish economy is much larger than Georgia’s, Ankara doesn’t control Georgia.
“It is not a hierarchical relationship, it is a partnership and both parts get a lot of benefits from this relationship,” he said.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon travelled to Qatar for a two day state visit with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Mr Rakhmon has said that he wants to attract more investment from Qatar and other Arab countries in Tajikistan’s tourism and hydropower sectors.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan wants to process 100% of its raw cotton harvest by 2020, the fibre2fashion.com website reported, signifying a potential step-change in its cotton export strategy.
The fibre2fashion website said that Uzbekistan currently processed only 40% of its cotton harvest and that it would need an investment of
$2.2b to build the processing facilities needed to hit this target. Cotton is one of Uzbekistan’s biggest commodities but it has been stigmatised by its association with child labour. Many Western brands have refused to buy clothing that contains Uzbek cotton.
Over the past few years, though, the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) has said the Uzbek authorities have reduced their reliance on child labour.
And constructing cotton processing plants would also create much needed jobs and help push rural Uzbekistan from a predominantly agrarian society towards a more industrialised one.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia wants to buy between two and four Sukhoi Superjet-100s from Russia over the next couple of years, media reported quoting Russian industry minister Denis Manturov. The Sukhoi Superjet-100 is a Russian-made and designed passenger aircraft. It was released in 2008. Sukhoi, which is state-owned, has struggled to sell the aircraft, though, except to Russia’s allies. The Sukhoi Superjet-100’s first commercial flight was between Yerevan and Moscow in 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) sent its first mission to Tashkent to meet with officials from the new government of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev for the first time since Islam Karimov died in September, Reuters reported. Reuters suggested that this visit was important as it might signal renewed interest in investing in Uzbekistan by the EBRD.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)