JUNE 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – People of the Yazidi faith opened a new temple in Tbilisi, media reported. The Muslim extremist group IS has been persecuting the Yazidi in Iraq. Media said the Yazidi population in Georgia has fallen to around 6,000 people from 30,000 a few years ago.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – China has agreed to give Kyrgyzstan a loan of nearly $300m to complete a new road linking Bishkek with the south of the country, media reported. The road, which crosses inhospitable mountain ranges, is important to the Kyrgyz government to increase its control over the south.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Kazakhstan arrested Sulambek Barkinkhoyev, the managing-director of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s flagship EXPO-2017 event, on suspicion of corruption. The arrest came a few days after police also arrested Mr Barkinkhoyev’s boss on corruption allegations.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia’s parliament ratified a security deal with the Georgian rebel region of South Ossetia which will see Russian soldiers stationed permanently in the region. Although the deal is symbolic, as Russian soldiers have been posted in S.Ossetia since the end of a 2008 war, it still rankled Georgia.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The number of cars imported into Azerbaijan dropped by around 50% in the first five months of the year, media reported quoting official statistics.
Between January and May, 13,912 passenger cars were imported into the country, down from 27,444 during the same period last year.
The slump in car imports into Azerbaijan is probably a result of a number of factors.
These include a general economic downturn in the region, linked to a recession in Russia and a drop in oil and gas prices. Russia’s economy drives the former Soviet region and oil and gas is the mainstay of Azerbaijan’s economy.
Also, earlier this year Azerbaijan devalued its manat currency by a third, making imports more expensive.
And in 2014, the Azerbaijani government passed a law which banned car imports not using the higher grade Euro-4 fuel type.
This meant that many older cars from Europe could no longer be imported into Azerbaijan.
The knock on effect of this slump in demand is hitting car prices in Azerbaijan too, economist Vugar Bayramov told the azernews.az website.
He said that as inflation has picked up in Azerbaijan, it has pushed up the price of a new cars but the value for older cars has fallen. “Our monitoring shows that the prices of old cars decreased by 7%,” he said.
Mr Bayramov also said that banks in Azerbaijan had also tightened their finance requirements for cars, requiring a downpayment for financing of 50%, up from 20% earlier.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The number of migrant workers travelling from Tajikistan to Russia fell by 15% during the first half of the year, according to data from the ministry of labour.
The statistics, which run from January to mid-June 2015, showed that about 315,000 workers travelled from Tajikistan to Russia to find work, 52,000 less than in 2014.
Most have been put off by the drop in Russian economic output, which has knocked job opportunities.
Tajik labour migration to Kazakhstan, though, has increased by 33%, although the absolute numbers are small in comparison with Russia. The data showed that 4,800 workers from Tajikistan had travelled to Kazakhstan to find work, up from 1,200 in 2014.
Remittances from migrant workers are key to Tajikistan’s economy. A World Bank report forecast a 40% drop in remittances to Tajikistan this year because of the poor state of the Russian economy and the collapse of the Tajik somoni.
The new ministry of labour data adds credence to this worsening economic picture.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – An interview with an alleged British tourist in Azerbaijan has triggered allegations of forgery. The interview, broadcast on domestic Azerbaijani TV, showed a man who introduced himself as James Bonar speaking broken English. “It is fantasy,” he said when asked of Azerbaijan.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s parliament approved a $150m loan from the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) to build a north-south motorway across the country. The EBD is headquartered in Almaty and is bankrolled mainly by Russia and Kazakhstan. It concentrates on member states of the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s ambassador in Delhi, Parahat Durdyev, said that the countries developing the so-called TAPI pipeline what will pump Turkmen gas to the Indian sub-continent will choose their consortium partners by the start of September.
The Kremlin-linked Sputnik news agency quoted Mr Durdyev as saying: “By September 1, the government of Turkmenistan [is] committed to producing the final results of the selection of a consortium and the leader of the consortium.”
TAPI is one of the biggest and most ambitious energy projects in the world. Construction work hasn’t yet started on the 1,650km pipeline which will cross Afghanistan and Pakistan but international organisations such as the World Bank have said that they support the plan.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan banned poultry imports from neighbouring Iran after a reported outbreak of bird flu, media reported quoting a government official who works in the ministry of agriculture’s veterinary department. Iran reported bird flu in the north of the country this month.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)