Category Archives: Uncategorised

Polymetal production grows from deposits in Kazakhstan and Armenia

MAY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian miner Polymetal increased its production guidance for the next three years to reflect the gold deposits it has bought in Armenia and Kazakhstan this year. By the year 2020, the Kapan and Komarovskoye mines will add 12.5% to Polymetal’s total production. Polymetal bought Kapan, located in southern Armenia, in March and Komarovskoye, in north-east Kazakhstan, in April.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Tajik ministers says everyone should have flag

MAY 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ramadan Rakhimzoda, the Tajik minister of internal affairs, said that every Tajik household should fly a national flag as proof of patriotism. The flag is an important item in the construction of Tajikistan’s national identity. In 2011, for the twentieth anniversary of Tajikistan’s independence, President Emomali Rakhmon ordered what was then the tallest flagpole in the world to be built in Dushanbe.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Kazakhstan to control NGO funds

MAY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s ministry of culture established an agency that will manage grant funding for NGOs, a decision in line with the new NGO law that President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed in December 2015. Human rights and NGO lobby groups have said that this law and this agency will restrict their ability to receive funding and undermine their work.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Azerbaijan’s oil fund avoids VTB offer

MAY 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — SOFAZ, Azerbaijan’s sovereign oil fund, said it has no intention of increasing its 2.95% share in Russia’s VTB Bank, a sign, perhaps, that the economic downturn has bitten into Azerbaijan’s ability to buy assets abroad. SOFAZ has previously been increasing the size of equity stakes it owns in various companies. Earlier in May, the Russian government said it was looking for buyers to reduce its stake in VTB. VTB is the second largest bank in Russia and owns subsidiaries across the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Azerbaijani energy company nears deal to buy Greek gas network

MAY 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, could be close to securing a deal with Italy’s Snam to unlock its stalled purchase of the Greek gas distributor DESFA.

Greece’s state development fund said that Snam, the Italian gas distribution company, will buy a 17% stake in DESFA, a deal that would allow SOCAR to own 49% of the Greek distributor.

“We expect completion of the process of the sale of a stake in DESFA to Azerbaijan’s SOCAR. 17% out of the SOCAR package will be acquired by Snam,” Stergios Pitsiorlas, head of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF) told Greek media.

Snam did not comment.

Media also said Rahman Mustafayev, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Greece, said Snam will partner with SOCAR. In March, Belgium’s Fluxys pulled out of a deal to partner with SOCAR to buy a 66% stake in DESFA.

It’s been a long-running affair. In 2013, SOCAR won a tender to buy 66% of DESFA for €400m ($450m), but the deal was frozen by the European Commission, which said that, according to a 2009 regulation, SOCAR could only buy a 49% stake.

DESFA is important to Azerbaijan because Greece will play a major role hosting part of a pipeline network that will pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe. The EU considers this an important new gas project

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Georgia’s trade shifts west

MAY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s trade flows are increasingly shifting westwards, data from the Statistics Committee showed. Trade turnover with EU countries grew by 11% in Jan.-April 2016 compared to the same period in 2015. Georgia’s trade with CIS countries, on the contrary, fell by 15%. Importantly, overall exports decreased, while imports grew.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Editorial: Media in Kyrgyzstan

MAY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Just days after Western human rights lobby groups had cheered Kyrgyzstan for dropping a draconian draft law that would have hindered NGO activity in the country and cut their funding, Kyrgyz MPs reminded the world that they are still ready to restrict freedoms.

Lawmakers said they dropped the NGO law because it would have harmed the economy, since many NGOs in Kyrgyzstan play the role of partner, or even substitute for the state in poverty reduction, social services and other issues.

Now, though, they will vote on a new bill put forward that bans foreigners from setting up media organisations in the country, or from funding more than 20% of their budget.

This will have repercussions for established news outlets, like AKIpress, KyrTAG, US-funded RFE/RL and Russia’s Sputnik.

This new law could profoundly change Kyrgyzstan’s media environment and, possibly, undermine its freedom. Kyrgyz MPs should do the right thing again and vote it down.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Lubricant plant opens in Kazakhstan

MAY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian energy company Lukoil said it had started construction work on a new lubricant manufacturing plant in Kazakhstan. Lubricants Central Asia, Lukoil’s subsidiary which will operate the plant, plans to open the plant in 2018. Kazakhstan and China will be the main markets for the plant, which will have a capacity of 100,000 tonnes/year. Kazakhstan wants to develop industries beyond oil and gas production and mining.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Tajik government steps in to save bank from going bust

DUSHANBE, MAY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s Central Bank placed Tojiksodirotbank (TSB) under its administration after the bank said it was on the brink of going bankrupt, the first major banking casualty of the current economic downturn.

TSB is the second-largest lender in the country and manages around a third of all loans in Tajikistan. Its collapse has shaken policymakers.

A senior official at the Central Bank, Mirzokhayota Yodgorov, replaced the bank’s chairman, Tojid- din Pirzoda. Sources in the banking sector also told local media that the EBRD could step in and inject vital cash into TSB.

“The question as to whether the EBRD will enter TSB’s capital will be resolved in June,” the source, quoted by Asia Plus, said.

According to the latest, unconfirmed, updates, the EBRD plans to buy a majority stake in the bank for $165m. The Tajik government could also step in and buy a 25% stake.

Earlier in May, TSB had said it was in talks to sell half of its shares to the EBRD.

Neither the EBRD nor the Tajik Central Bank commented but Tojiksodirotbank did release a fairly oblique statement confirming it had been placed under administration.

“The National Bank of Tajikistan Board in accordance with Articles 48, 49 and 50 of its Laws, to improve the financial situation of Tojiksodirotbank and protect the rights of its depositors and creditors on 18th May 2016 appointed a temporary administration in the bank for three months,” it said in a statement.

The banking sector in Tajikistan, hit by a deep economic downturn, has accumulated overdue loans and is faced with cash shortages. An IMF delegation earlier this year said that some of Tajikistan’s biggest banks were on the brink of default.

Tajikistan’s financial sector is under stress because the value of remittances from migrant workers has shrunk significantly over the past two years, undermining the economy and, crucially, hitting customers’ ability to pay back their loans.

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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Kazakh police arrest activists

ALMATY, MAY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s police detained several activists ahead of a planned demonstration against reforms to the land code in an attempt to stifle opposition forces which have been attracting support in the country’s main centres.

Police detained various activists on May 17 and 18, when courts in Atyrau, Almaty, Uralsk and Astana ordered the arrest of several people on charges of participating or planning unsanctioned public meetings.

Courts ordered pre-trial detention sentences for three to 15 days.

Max Bokayev, an activist from Atyrau, and Bakhytzhan Toregozhina, director of human rights NGO Ar.Rukh.Khak. in Almaty were among the most prominent figures to be detained.

Amendments to the land code, approved in November 2015, have been at the heart of protests that sparked in Atyrau in mid-April and spread throughout Kazakhstan over the weeks that followed.

The protests have now taken on a more general anti-government agenda.

People in Kazakhstan are increasingly frustrated with the drop in economic conditions. Jobs are being cut, inflation is rising.

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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)