NOV. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will give a $65.2m loan to Tajikistan to support the construction and remodelling of the Dushanbe-Kurgan Tyube road link. The highway serves as the country’s major north-south artery. The Tajik government will allocate $17.2m to the project. The OPEC Fund for International Development will also send a $12m loan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
TASHKENT, NOV. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Anatoliy, 60, earns a living by ferrying children to school each day across Uzbekistan’s Soviet- built capital and then hawking for fares in his battered Daewoo Matiz, along the city’s wide boulevards.
“I used to spend 80,000 sum (around $25.7) per week to buy fuel for my car and now I spend 120,000 sum ($38.6),” he said with a resigned air.
On the issue of protesting against the price rises, he shrugged and said that people in Uzbekistan were different from people in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. “People here are ready to say ‘hop mailly’ [“let it be” in Uzbek] to whatever decision is taken by officials,” he said.
Uzbekistan is considered by most human rights organisations to be one of the most repressive countries in the world and anti-government demonstrations are virtually unheard of.
Officials have said that the price rises were needed to balance the price of petrol sold in the regions and in Tashkent. Many people, though, are skeptical and have said that the government is exporting too much petrol for its own profit.
Shokhrukh, 40, another Tashkent-based gypsy cab driver sucked in a deep breath when he was asked about the petrol price rises.
“Our oil reserves in the Bukhara deposit are now insufficient to cover domestic petrol demands and the government has to import petrol from Russia which they have to pay for in roubles and US dollars,” he said.
Like other Central Asian currencies, the Uzbek sum has lost value over the past couple of years, pushing up inflation.
But is it not only drivers who will be impacted by the rise in the cost of petrol. Shukhrat, 40, an ethnic Uyghur in Tashkent, who sells cloth at Tashkent local bazaar said that all prices will have to increase off the back of such a big jump in the price of petrol.
“Food requires transportation and consequently fuel, I expect some shop owners will rise their food prices,” he said.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
TASHKENT, NOV. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The OSCE, Europe’s democracy watchdog, started its first long-term vote observation mission in Uzbekistan ahead of a presidential election on Dec. 4
ODHIR, the OSCE’s vote monitoring unit, has only previously sent short-term missions to Uzbekistan.
In a statement, ODHIR said the government had invited it to send a long-term monitoring team. This is important because it adds more weight to the impression that Uzbekistan is adopting an outward- looking agenda since the death of Islam Karimov in September. He was regarded as difficult to deal with and mistrustful of the West.
ODHIR will send a 15-person team headed by Swedish diplomat Peter Tejler to Tashkent and 20 more people will be dispatched to the regions.
Another 250 observers will be sent to Uzbekistan a few days before the vote on Dec. 4.
Last year, ODHIR sent a short term mission to monitor a presidential election. They reported that the election had lacked competition and contravened the rule of law.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
OCT. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon inaugurated construction of the Rogun dam which should, if completed to the current plans, be the tallest dam in the world.
The Rogun dam project, though, is a project mired in controversy. Drawn up by the Soviets, it has been at the design stage for decades.
Downstream Uzbekistan is fiercely against the project, fearing that it will divert water that it needs to irrigate its cotton fields. Environmentalists have complained about the damage that will be caused to the natural landscape and human rights groups have documented the thousands of people forcibly moved to clear space for the project.
The inauguration of the Rogun dam project also came the day after a three-hour blackout hit the entire country. Supporters of the project said that this highlighted the need for the hydropower project to be built.
Italy’s Salini Impregilo was handed the $3.9b contract to build the Rogun dam earlier this year.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s GDP grew by 1.5% in September, according to the country’s Statistics Committee. Total growth in Q3 2016 amounted to 2.2%, mirroring last year’s pace. Still, the government predicts a 3% growth this year and a 4% increase in 2017. In 2015, Georgia recorded a 2.8% GDP increase, its weakest since 2009.
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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
TASHKENT, NOV. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian telecoms operator VimpelCom said revenues in Uzbekistan grew 5% in Q3 2016, compared to the same period in 2015 because of a new pricing mechanism and underlying inflation.
In Uzbekistan, VimpelCom started to link its mobile charges to the US dollar, after volatility in the Uzbek sum hit the company’s revenue stream. This pushed up mobile and data prices plans across the country. It said that average user revenue had risen by 14%.
Tougher competition, however, shrank the customer base of Vimpel- Com’s Beeline brand in the country.
“The Uzbek market continues to experience intense competition, however Beeline remains the leader.
The overall customer base decreased 6% to 9.6m, due to the launch of two new mobile operators in 2015,” the company said in a statement.
Subscribers numbers had fallen below 10m at end-2015, a 3-year low. Earlier this year, VimpelCom paid a fine of $795m after it admitted paying bribes in 2007/8 to access the Uzbek mobile market.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s foreign reserves fell by 3.1% in October to $4b, the Central Bank said in a statement. At the end of 2015, foreign currency holdings amounted to $5b. This year alone, Azerbaijan used up 20% of its reserves. Over the past two years, sustained low oil prices forced the government to intervene in the currency market and prop up the economy. In 2015, reserves shrank by 60%.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — State-owned Uzbekistan Airways said it will start a short term direct connection to London Heathrow in December. The twice weekly flights will run from Dec. 9 to Dec. 20. This seems to be an attempt to test the feasibility of a renewed and stable connection to Europe’s financial capital, after direct flights became inconstant over the past decade.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Sochi during an official visit aimed at improving economic and trade ties. After a legal spat, Turkmenistan and Russia stopped trading gas, an important revenue stream for the Central Asian country. Mr Berdymukhamedov’s visit signals a potential rapprochement between the two countries.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
BISHKEK, OCT. 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s four-party coalition government collapsed after the Social Democrats withdrew their support for it, citing irreconcilable differences with their partners.
The break-up of the coalition ended Sooronbay Jeenbekov’s six month term as PM and forces parliament to try to patch together a third government in 2016. It also comes at a sensitive time for Kyrgyzstan’s young parliamentary democracy with only six weeks to go before a bitter and divisive referendum set for Dec. 11 on whether to boost the powers of the PM.
“We tried to keep the coalition, but the recent actions of certain individuals, now our former partners, exposed the problems,” a statement from the Social Democrats said. “We cannot be in coalition with those who are associated with the common interests of Akayev and Bakiyev and those who go against the national interests over constitutional reforms.”
References to Askar Akayev and Kurmanbek Bakiyev were to Kyrgyzstan’s two former presidents who were overthrown during revolutions in 2005 and 2010.
The Social Democrats are the party of President Almazbek Atambayev and he immediately charged them with forming a new government.
This will be difficult. The Social Democrats hold 38 of the 120-seat legislature and will have to make deals with some of the five other parties to patch together a government. If it fails, Mr Atambyaev will have to turn to another party to form a government or be forced to call a parliamentary election.
The collapse of the government underlines just how fragile Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary system is. Mr Jeenbekov was Kyrgyzstan’s sixth PM since constitutional changes in 2010 shifted power from the presidency to the PM.
Emil Joroev, a professor of Political Studies at the American University of Central Asia, said that the weak and short-lived governments were making Kyrgyzstan increasingly unstable.
“The collapse of the ruling coali- tion, and the corresponding fall of the government underscores the fragility of inter-party agreements the tendency of divisive single issues to trump over larger, encompassing development agendas, and the ease with which partners in a ruling coalition have been able to break it with no real accountability,” he said.
People in Bishkek had differing views on the collapse of the latest government. Some were frustrated but others just shrugged.
“We are not tired of changes, we are now used to seeing it this,” said Samat Joldoshbekov, 23.
The December referendum on extending the powers of the PM is controversial because opposition groups have accused Mr Atambayev of trying to take power by stealth.
The current constitution bars Mr Atambayev, 60, from standing in a presidential election next year but does not stop him from becoming PM later, a move that his opponents say he is planning.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)