SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan has ratified the International Labour Organisation’s convention on the ban on forced and child labour, the ministry of labour said in a statement. Every year, during the cotton harvest, human rights organisations denounce dozens of cases of child and forced labour. Cotton is an important commodity for Uzbekistan’s economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The website of the Uzbek PM’s office introduced a comment section for the first time, allowing citizens and registered companies to file complaints and suggestions electronically directly to the PM. The section is highly visible on the homepage of the PM’s website. Citizens can also file their requests through a hotline or by visiting the regional headquarters of UzLiDeP, the ruling party.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — It was always going to get heated. Georgia’s parliamentary election descended into fighting this week when two opposing MPs traded punches during a live TV debate.
The surprise, perhaps, is that it has taken so long. Reports from Tbilisi have said that this has been one of the better-natured election campaigns in Georgia of recent years.
This parliamentary election campaign is a replay of the 2012 election when the Georgian Dream coalition, the party of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, unseated the United National Movement party (UNM), the party of the then president Mikheil Saakashvili, in a bitter affair.
Since then the two parties haven’t stopped hurling insults at each other over human rights abuses and corruption. Fury has been building for four years. The policy differences and what each party represents — essentially the Georgian Dream is pro-Russia, pro-Church and pro-Ivanishvili; the UNM pro-West, pro-liberal and pro-Saakashvili — get lost in the fog of the battle and character assassinations that both sides have been dealing in.
Smaller parties generally form alliances with either the Georgian Dream or the UNM and buckle up for the ride.
At the apex of the storm two men are using the election to fight a Machiavellian encounter. Neither is actually standing in the election.
Ivanishvili is Georgia’s richest man. He pulls the strings at the Georgian Dream, deciding who will lead the party, and its policies.
Saakashvili, who dominated Georgian politics between 2003 and 2013, has been forced into exile, wanted by the Georgian prosecutors to stand trial on various accounts of financial wrongdoing. He is now governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine but there is little doubt he wields huge influence over the UNM His Dutch-born wife Sandra Roelofs, is standing as a candidate.
Ivanishvili and Saakashvili hate each other.
There are still eight days to go until the Oct. 8 election. They are going to be eight, tension-filled days with candidates focused on attacking one another, rather than debating the issues of the day — the state of the economy, relations with Russia and the West, civil rights, its rebel states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
After the elections, perhaps there will be time for Georgian politics to reset.
By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Rogun dam and power station, under construction in Tajikistan, will use Siemens-branded switch- gears, the German edition of Focus reported. In July, Italy’s Salini Impregilo won a $3.9b contract to build the Rogun dam, which will become the tallest dam in the world, at 355m.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan may be known around the world for making intricate carpets, breeding fine horses and pumping enough gas out of the ground to help power China, but now it wants to branch out into crisp production.
The EBRD said that it was lending Turkmen brewer Berk $2.8m to build a potato crisp plant.
“Already a leading producer on the Turkmen beer market, Berk hopes to also become a frontrunner in potato chips production in the country, where most chips (crisps) are currently imported,” the EBRD wrote in a press release.
Berk and the EBRD will face some significant cultural challenges trying to spread crisp eating in Turkmenistan, though.
Sales of spirits, mainly vodka, currently dwarf beer sales and, while crisps are particularly popular as a beer snack in Britain, they are still viewed with suspicion in other countries. In Russia, for example, the norm is to eat salty, chewy cheese with beer.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A minor partner in the Georgian election coalition headed by Opera singer Paata Burchuladze, the State For The People, quit after a row over corruption allegations. Mr Burchuladze is a wildcard in the Oct. 8 election. He has no previous political experience but has been attracting a fair amount of goodwill from voters.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazmunaigas, Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company, created a new subsidiary, KMG-Eurasia to exploit a joint Kazakh-Russian project in the Caspian Sea. The Kazakh government said total investment in the Eurasia field could reach $1.5b over the next decade. Last year, Baltabek Kuandykov, the project manager, said Kazmunaigas was due to create a subsidiary for the project in the first few months of 2016.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Despite countless declarations on efforts to save its banking sector, Kazakh banks are not as healthy as they say.
Last year, President Nursultan Nazarbayev instructed the Central Bank to conduct stress test to avoid a spiraling of non-performing loans similar to the crisis that followed the 2007/8 global debacle.
He had just sacked Kairat Kelimbetov, Mr Devaluation, the Central Bank chief under whom the tenge currency lost around half its value in two years.
The result of the declarations has been a sharp drop in the share of
bad loans in banks’ total portfolio. Officially, this week Kazakhstan’s Central Bank chief Daniyar Akishev said that non-performing loans had shrunk from around 30% two years ago to just 8.4%.
This raised eyebrows among analysts.
How could a broken system, hit by currency depreciation and toxic assets, recover so quickly, without undergoing a serious makeover?
The answer is simple, according to some: The problems were swept under the rug.
“Kazakhstan’s banking sector is a legalised zombie park,” an anonymous economist told Forbes Kazakhstan.
“In reality, bad loans make up around 60% of the total loan portfolio. But through refinancing, on paper, banks have written most of them off of their accounts.”
Notably, the most frequent and well attended protests in Kazakhstan for the past few years are organised by groups of mortgage holders. They mainly hold US dollar debt.
If their overdue loans are neither being refinanced, nor being accounted for, where are banks hiding them?
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – US-based Human Rights Watch said that police in Tajikistan had detained around 50 family members of activists who staged a protest at a OSCE meeting this week. Around 20 activists from Tajikistan living in exile in Europe staged a silent protest against the government during an OSCE conference on human rights in Warsaw. Protesters wore T-shirts showing photos of jailed journalists and opposition members.
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(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)
SEPT. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s Air Manas launched a route from Bishkek to Kashgar, in China’s Xinjiang region, strengthening regional links. Turkish low-cost airline Pegasus owns 49% of Air Manas. The air link to Kashgar will be synchronised with Istanbul-Bishkek connections. The Xinjiang region is synonymous with Uyhgurs. There is a large Uyhgur minotiry living in Bishkek.
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(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)f