JAN. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — British oil company BP will invest $150m in the renovation of the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline, the Georgian government said. BP did not give further details on the pipeline upgrade. The pipeline runs from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. Last year, rebels from the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia grabbed a portion of the pipeline.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)
JAN. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Canadian gold miner Centerra Gold, which is part owned by Kyrgyzstan, said it would apply to the International Court of Arbitration over its dispute with the Mongolian government on the development of a gold mine. Centerra has said that the Mongolian government is taking too long to decide whether or not to give it a licence to exploit the mine.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)
JAN. 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia’s VimpelCom said that it was prepared to pay a $600m for bribes it paid in Uzbekistan to gain access to mobile phone licences. The row is part of a wider corruption investigation centred around bribes paid by international telecoms companies to gain access to Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)
ALMATY, JAN. 18 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s national airline Air Astana reported a 21% drop in revenues in 2015, a sign that the economic downturn is hurting state- owned companies.
Air Astana was not explicit about exactly what triggered the sharp drop in revenue. In a press release, Air Astana CEO Peter Foster said: “A sharp fall in revenue was more than compensated for by significant cost savings, including, though not limited to, jet fuel savings.”
Revenue in 2015 dropped to $738m. Net profit rose to $47.4m from $19.5m.
An Air Astana spokesperson told The Bulletin that more explanation on why revenues had fallen so sharply would be given in a full year report to be published over the next few weeks.
The suspicion is that the depreciation of the tenge has hit Air Astana hard. Its income is mainly in tenge and its costs in US dollars or euros. The tenge has lost 50% of its value over the past five months.
Air Astana is supposed to lease 7 aircraft from Netherlands-based AerCap, a deal priced in euros. The fall in the tenge makes the deal expensive.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)
JAN. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Steel-maker ArcelorMittal Temirtau said it would retroactively increase salaries for its workers by 6.8% from Jan.1, 2016. The company, a subsidiary of India’s ArcelorMittal, operates steel plants and coal mines in the Karaganda region in central Kazakhstan. In 2014 and 2015, the company argued with workers and the government over salaries and VAT refunds.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)
JAN. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the first leader of post-Soviet Armenia, has been flown to the United States for emergency treatment on what local media have described as a cancer. Mr Ter-Petrosyan, 71, was president of Armenia between 1991 and 1998. He has since become a vocal opponent of the government and was blamed for whipping up street protests in 2008 that culminated in police shooting dead at least 10 people.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)
JAN. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Gazprom Kyrgyzstan, a fully-owned subsidiary of Russia’s Gazprom, paid off a $41.6m debt that the Kyrgyz company has owed to its Kazakh counterparts since 2004. Gazprom bought Kyrgyzgas for $1 in 2014, promising to pay off its debts. This deal appears to underline Gazprom’s drive to make good on this promise.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)
JAN. 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev called a parliamentary election for March 20, more than a year ahead of schedule. Officially MPs asked him to bring the election forward from 2017 because they said that they had fulfilled their mandate. Unofficially, the Kazakh political elite appear to be increasingly worried about civil disobedience linked to worsening economic conditions.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)
JAN. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In 2015, officials in Tajikistan shaved off beards on nearly 13,000 men, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported quoting a police press conference. The police described the purge as a war against excessive Islamic influences in the country. Tajikistan has said constantly over the past few years that Islamic radicals pose a real threat to its security. Rights activists have said this is simply another way of imposing control.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)
JAN. 22 2016, ALMATY/Kazakhstan (The Conway Bulletin) — Bus drivers in Kazakhstan’s financial capital have been striking because of the introduction of an electronic ticketing system which they say makes their job harder, one side of a row that highlights the problems introducing modern ticketing systems into Soviet-era systems brings.
Under the new system, passengers buy a day pass for the bus system for 400 tenge and tap in and out on a monitor in the body of the bus. Under the old system, passengers bought separate tickets for each journey.
From Oct. 1, Almaty was the first city in Kazakhstan to operate an electronic ticket system. Until Jan. 11 it ran alongside the previous token system. Since then, though, it has become the only way for passengers to pay their travel fares. And many don’t like it.
Kuralai Abenova, a frequent user of public transport said: “I like this cashless system but I am afraid I’d forget this card at home. If I ride without this card, I will be fined.”
According to the head of Almaty’s public transport network, Dauren Alimbekov, the new ticketing system cost $12m to introduce.
His staff also said that the bus drivers who went on strike and were deemed to be in breach of their contract would be sacked.
As for the bus drivers they have said that up to 40% of the passengers now ride the bus for free.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)