AUG. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Riot police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of dozens of young men in the provincial Azerbaijani town of Mingachevir, a rare display of public anger and frustration in Azerbaijan. The crowd had been calling for the head of the local police force to resign after a 22-year-old Azerbaijani man died in police custody two days earlier.
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(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)
AUG. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) signed a deal with the Kazakh government to host the first internationally-controlled bank of low-enriched uranium, an agreement that will boost Kazakhstan’s global stature. The idea is that countries can ask to tap into the supply for fuel for their power stations and prevent any unilateral nuclear build up.
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(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)
AUG. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan has once again restricted access to Facebook and YouTube, two of the country’s most popular social networking sites, users said. The Tajik government has been cracking down on opposition figures over the past few weeks, a strategy that may be linked to the social media restrictions.
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(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)
AUG. 20/21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – China’s state-linked Sinopec agreed to buy the half of Kazakhstan-based Caspian Investments Resources (CIR) for $1.09b that it didn’t already own from Russia’s Lukoil, media reported. The price is lower than the $1.2b initially struck in 2014 and reflects the lower oil price. CIR used to be called Nelson Resources.
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(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)
AUG. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Six members of the UN’s Human Rights Council said that a trial that sentenced human rights defenders Leyla and Arif Yunus to jail for 8-1/2 and 7 years for various financial crimes, was politically motivated. Their intervention was just the latest in a series of criticism of the authorities in Azerbaijan by Western rights groups.
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(News report from Issue No. 244, published on Aug. 21 2015)
AUG. 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Uzbekistan said they had arrested nine more people in connection to financial crimes linked to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, RFE/RL reported. Until March 2014 Ms Karimova was one of the most powerful people in Uzbekistan. She has been under house since then.
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(News report from Issue No. 244, published on Aug. 21 2015)
AUG. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Shares in Kazakh copper miner KAZ Minerals, formerly called Kazakhmys, rose by 20% on the London stock exchange immediately after Kazakhstan’s government said that it would allow its tenge currency to free-float. The announcement knocked 23% off the value of the tenge, giving exporters a much needed boost.
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(News report from Issue No. 244, published on Aug. 21 2015)
AUG. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Arsen Avetisian, majority shareholder in Air Armenia, said he was beaten up in central Yerevan after meeting with Ruben Hayrapetian, another wealthy Armenian businessman. Mr Avetisian declined to give media full details of his row. Air Armenia is Armenia’s largest private airline. It has not flown since last year when it was declared bankrupt.
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(News report from Issue No. 244, published on Aug. 21 2015)
ALMATY/Kazakhstan, AUG. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan gave up its defence of the tenge by ditching a peg to the US dollar which had cost it billions to enforce, a move that knocked 23% off the currency’s value .
Businesses, policy makers and analysts will now be watching for a subsequent rise in inflation, as well as possible social unrest, in Kazakhstan.
At a government meeting broadcast on national television, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said that the depreciation of the Russian rouble and a sharp fall in oil prices in the past year meant that it was becoming far too costly to defend the tenge.
“Let us face it, this is a necessary measure, there was no other alternative. Crisis always brings about change,” he said.
This is a major policy shift for Kazakhstan which had been alone in the Central Asia and South Caucasus region in stubbornly defending its currency. Perhaps the sudden devaluation of the Chinese yuan earlier this month was the trigger for the Kazakh devaluation.
Kazakh exporters had been struggling as their products became more expensive.
The devaluation will also damage the reputation of the Central Bank and the tenge. This is its second devaluation in 18 months. Since February 2014, the tenge has lost 39% of its value.
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(News report from Issue No. 244, published on Aug. 21 2015)
AUG. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a meeting in Astana, information ministers from Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan agreed to set up a news channel which will promote a so-called Turkic view of the world. These countries, and especially Azerbaijan, have become frustrated with what they view as biased coverage in Western media.
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(News report from Issue No. 244, published on Aug. 21 2015)