Category Archives: Uncategorised

Kyrgyz civil society advocates push for greater influence

MARCH 29/30 2016, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Around 250 delegates from Kyrgyzstan’s civil society gathered in the conference centre of a Bishkek hotel to discuss, argue and chew over just how they can play a more prominent role in holding the authorities to account and influencing the country’s development.

Organisers have hailed the meeting as groundbreaking for Central Asia which since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 has been driven by top-down decision-making. Civil society is able to influence events at a very local level in Kyrgyzstan but higher up, except perhaps through the ballot box and through revolutions, little is possible.

Rita Karasartova, Director of the Institute of Social Analysis, and one of the organisers of the forum dubbed ‘I Care’, said that the movement had taken momentum and inspiration from a conference organised last year to discuss potential changes to the Kyrgyz constitution.

“We were concerned about possible big risks of this proposal, and we wanted to speak up about them in front of the Government on the central square,” she told a Conway Bulletin correspondent. “Despite some parliamentary factions accusing us of preparing coup d’état, our protests were fruitful because the President cancelled the proposed constitutional changes.”

At the ‘I Care’ meeting judicial reforms, MPs pay and the failure of governments to deliver on election promises were hot topics — a reflection of how free Kyrgyzstan’s society is compared to the rest of the region.

Some, though, were sceptical of the reasons for the conference.

Anastasia, 23, a student in Bishkek, said: “Such forums do not happen just by themselves. There must be foreign supporters that promote them to have such activities.”

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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Uzbek-Kyrgyz border tensions dip

MARCH 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Officials from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan met to defuse a border row that had threatened to bubble over into conflict earlier this month. After the meeting, Uzbek forces pulled their soldiers and tanks away from the contested areas that they had moved into a week earlier.

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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Kyrgyzstan approves White Cliff plans

MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kyrgyz government approved exploration plans laid out by Australian miner White Cliff Minerals for its Aucu gold project. The agreement extends the exploration licence for White Cliff to 2020. Aucu, located in west Kyrgyzstan, holds an initial inferred resource of 4.83m tonnes of gold. Despite friction with its biggest foreign investor, Centerra Gold, at the Kumtor gold mine, Kyrgyzstan is still trying to woo foreign companies.

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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Editorial: Georgia’s dollarised economy

APRIL 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Over-reliance on US dollars as a benchmark for prices of luxury items and, most importantly, as a currency in which savings are held, is a common affliction for the economies of South Caucasus and Central Asia.

This week Georgia’s Statistics Committee said US dollar-denominated deposits make up more than two-thirds of the total held at commercial banks. This is the highest level in the past five years.

Central bankers in other countries, however, boasted the public’s growing confidence in their local currencies but this is, frankly, coming from a very low base. And who really has much confidence in a currency such as the tenge right now? It lost around half its value last year. As did the Azerbaijani manat.

The vulnerability of these currencies and the inability of the Central Banks to protect their values show just why ordinary people turn to the trusty Greenback for their savings.

Despite whimpering from Central Bankers that confidence is returning in their currencies, the US dollar will remain the currency of choice.

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(Editorial from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Azerbaijani SOCAR’s deal to buy Greek gas distributor put into doubt

MARCH 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Belgian gas distributor Fluxys has pulled back from buying a 17% stake in Greece’s gas pipeline operator DESFA, media reported, potentially derailing a deal by Azerbaijani energy company SOCAR to buy 49% of the Greek company.

Azerbaijan’s SOCAR had initially agreed to buy a 66% stake in the Greek distributor in 2013 for €400m ($454m) but the European Commission stepped in and said that a 2009 regulation meant it could only buy a 49% stake. This effectively froze the deal until SOCAR found a company to agree to buy the 17% stake.

The pressure is now on SOCAR, which has until the end of 2016 to comply with EU regulations and find another purchaser.

In the current low-priced market, though, this will not be easy and SOCAR admitted as much.

“Currently we are in the process of reducing the stake of DESFA through sales to potential buyers in Europe and this process is expected to be completed in late 2016,” the Natural Gas Europe website quoted an unnamed source at SOCAR as saying.

For SOCAR, buying a stake in DESFA is important. It is due to play an important technical back-up role in Greece for the final section of a pipeline pumping gas to Europe from Azerbaijan.

The Greek newspaper Ekathi- merini quoted unnamed sources as saying that the deal with Fluxys was off. When reached by phone, though, Fluxys declined to confirm one way or the other.

A Fluxys spokesman said: “Since the beginning, we have not been involved directly as a company. It is a matter that Fluxys shareholders need to address.”

Neither Belgium’s Publigas, which owns 77.7% in Fluxys, nor Canada’s Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, which owns 20% in Fluxys, could be reached for a comment.

Fluxys had looked like a good fit to buy DESFA because it owns a 19% stake in the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), the planned final section of a network of pipelines stretching from the Caspian Sea to Europe.

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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Kazakhstan allows headscarves in school

MARCH 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s minister of education Yerlan Sagadiyev said school councils were free to allow headscarves into the classroom. The declaration follows a public request to allow kimeshek headdress, considered part of Kazakh traditional dress, thus not in conflict with the government’s ban on wearing religious clothing items. Mr Sagadiyev’s declaration has now opened the way for more exceptions.

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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Architect who added curves to Azerbaijan’s skyline dies

MARCH 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Zaha Hadid, known for designing some of the world’s most cutting edge buildings, including the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, died in Miami of a heart attack aged 65.

Hadid had been admitted to hospital for bronchitis when she suffered the heart attack, her publicist said.

Tributes poured in from around the world for Hadid, a British citizen of Iraqi descent, who pushed the boundaries of building design throughout her career.

Her buildings were typically full of curves and melted into the surrounding landscape, urban and natural. She is probably, globally, best known for designing the swimming arena for the London 2012 Olympic Games and the Phaeno Science Park in Wolfsburg, Germany.

But Hadid also left her mark in the Central Asia/South Caucasus region by designing a museum in Baku named after Heydar Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s former president and the father of current president Ilham Aliyev.

The Heydar Aliyev Centre opened in 2012 to international acclaim. In 2014, London’s Design Museum gave Hadid its design of the year award.

“Located in a part of the world associated with flying carpets and magic lanterns, the levitating soft white peaks of Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre feel indigenous,” the Design Museum said. “Hadid has made a topologist’s dream into a practical reality shaped by hypnotically fluid forms. A masterwork of invention and execution.”

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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Dollarisation grows in Georgia

MARCH 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Georgian Central Bank said the dollarisation of Georgia’s economy continued to rise in February, as US dollar deposits grew to 68.4% of the total, the highest level since October 2010. A high dollarisation of deposits suggests that bank customers’ trust in the local currency in waning.

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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Russian tourism to Azerbaijan to rise

MARCH 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The number of Russian tourists going to Azerbaijan for holidays will increase by 50% according to calculations by Russian financial newspaper Kommersant. Due to diplomatic sanctions against Turkey, the Russian government banned Turkey as a holiday destination for its citizens.

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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Azerbaijan’s SOCAR applies to ADB for Shah Deniz loan

MARCH 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR said it applied for a $450m loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to help pay for the expansion of its Shah Deniz gas project.

The loan, according to both ADB and SOCAR, is aimed at financing the second phase of the project, which the company plans to bring online by 2018. Shah Deniz is core to Azerbaijan’s future gas plans.

BP, which develops the field together with SOCAR, said the expansion of the Shah Deniz project will cost around $28b and will add 16b cubic metres annually to the current production of around 10b cubic metres.

Gas produced at Shah Deniz 2 is already booked for export to Georgia and Turkey in 2018 and further on to Europe by 2019, with the completion of the Southern Gas Corridor.

Unnamed ADB sources told Natural Gas Europe: “It is in the processing stage. Once approved, the loan will be provided under the state guarantees.”

There was no information on the timeline of the loan.

SOCAR, hit by sustained low oil prices, has applied to various sources for financing and has sought to divest from some of its unprofitable ventures to raise cash for its core projects.

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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)