Category Archives: Uncategorised

Armenia debates on debt calculation change

JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – YEREVAN — Armenia’s government wants to change the way it measures its national debt, a con trick, its opponents have said, which is aimed at massaging the numbers by cutting out the Central Bank’s borrowings.

The Armenian parliament passed a first reading of a bill which will ditch the current state debt and instead measure the national debt.

Atom Janjughazyan, deputy finance minister, said the change was needed to meet international standards.

“The sole purpose of the bill is to improve the financial statistics of the State in accordance with international practice,” he said in parliament.

But opposition MPs said the change was merely a cover for allowing the government to borrow so that it can ease itself out of the current financial downturn, triggered by a fall in the Russian economy, the main economic driver for the former Soviet Union.

And this viewpoint appears to be backed by international economists. Teresa Daban Sanchez, the IMF representative in Armenia, told an Armenian newspaper the country’s external debt is now uncomfortable.

“The government needs to take measures so that the debt against the GDP index begins to fall,” she said.

Armenia’s government has previously said it will borrow to prop itself up through the current economic downturn. Under government rules its debt must be below 60% of GDP.

Mr Janjughazyan, the deputy finance minister, said under the new system, Armenia’s debt measured $4.4b against a GDP of $10.9m, comfortably below the 60% mark.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Congress investigates Azerbaijan trip

JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US Congress said that its ethics committee was investigating whether SOCAR, the Azerbaijani state-owned energy company, paid for a 2013 trip to Baku for 10 congressmen and 32 staff members.

Congress’ rules ban foreign governments paying for overseas trips. All the Congressmen implicated in the investigation deny any wrong-doing and have said that they were unaware that SOCAR had paid for their trips to a conference in Baku.

The Houston Chronicle reported that the focus of the investigation are hundreds of thousands of dollars paid out by SOCAR to two Texas-based non-profit organisations which then paid for trips to Baku.

Azerbaijan’s lobbying techniques have attracted more and more criticism over the past few years.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Kazakhstan to join WTO by end of the year

JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – After 19 years of negotiations, Kazakhstan will join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) later this year after officially agreeing terms with the economic group.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev was quick to appear on TV to laud the success of the WTO entry .

“The WTO membership opens up new horizons for our econ- omy,” Mr Nazarbayev said on national TV.

Commodities make up most of Kazakhstan’s foreign trade, already carried at very low tariffs.

Tariffs are at the centre of the debate on Kazakhstan’s WTO membership.

It is also part of the Russia-led Customs Union, which morphed into the Eurasian Economic Union this year. This is, essentially, an old-school trade bloc which promotes free trade between members but puts up barriers to non-members. The other members of the Eurasian

Economic Union are Russia, Belarus and Armenia. Kyrgyzstan is on the brink of joining.

Even so, the WTO and Kaza- khstan appear to have found a way around this potential stumbling block, although the details are scant.

Kazakh industrials have also been reticent about joining the WTO.

“Our community is concerned that the accession into the WTO would seriously reduce the protection levels and cause the flooding of cheap goods into our markets, which would kill our production,” Rakhim Oshak- bayev, deputy chairman of the National Chamber of Entrepre- neurs, told Kazakh media.

The terms of the accession remain classified and analysts have questioned this secrecy. When it first applied to join the organisation in 1996, Kazakhstan was a poor country which had just emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Union. Now, the scenario is different.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Kazakhstan to issue Eurobond, again

JUNE 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan will issue a £2b Eurobond, economy minister Yerbolat Dossayev told local media.

Mr Dossayev didn’t give specific dates for the issue but Reuters reported that Citigroup and JP Morgan are joint book- runners and Kazkommerts Securities and Halyk Finance are joint lead managers for the issue.

This is the second major dollar-denominated Eurobond that Kazakhstan has issued in the last year. In 2014, Kazakhstan issued a $2.5b Eurobond, its first since 2000.

Kazakhstan has been dealing with the fall out of a slide in global oil prices and a dip in the fortunes of Russia’s economy. Although the Central Bank has not stated just why it has borrowed so heavily in the past year, it is likely linked to this economic downturn.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Kyrgyz anti-gay law proceeds

JUNE 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – MPs in Kyrgyzstan voted overwhelmingly to pass the second reading of a controversial law that will ban so-called gay propaganda. To become law, the bill needs to pass a third reading and then be signed by President Almazbek Atambayev. Russia passed a similar law in 2013.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Iran to develop trade with Tajikistan

JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran plans to export more refined gas products to Tajikistan and Armenia, Iranian media quoted a senior official at the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company as saying.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Interest rates steady in Armenia

JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s Central Bank kept its key interest rate unchanged at 10.5% as inflation steadied. The Central Bank increased its interest rate to 10.5% in February as it tried to defend the value of its currency.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Uzbekistan buys Airbus military planes

JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek defence ministry has ordered four C295W military transport planes manufactured by Airbus at its plant in Seville, Spain, Tashkent-based news agency uzdaily.com reported.

There has been no official confirmation from the Uzbek government but for
Uzbek media to report on a deal like this is a nod to its veracity. Plane spotters in Seville have also posted photographs online of a C295W plane carrying an Uzbek flag on its wing tail.

Airbus, which is headquar- tered in Paris and is part owned by Germany, France and Spain, has also dodged commenting on the deal although one of its representatives was quoted by Uzbek media in June at an airshow in France.

“For Airbus is a great honour to participate in the modernisation of Uzbekistan Airways,” the director for Airbus sales in Central Asia and eastern Europe, Stefan Konkoly, told the website jahonnews.uz.

Mr Konkoly, apparently, didn’t mention a deal with the Uzbek military.

Europe has only recently patched up its relationship with Uzbekistan. A few years ago, it considered Uzbekistan a pariah state. Human rights groups had accused the Uzbek government of shooting dead hundreds of protesters in 2005 in the town of Andijan in the east of the country.

More recently, though, Europe and NATO needed Uzbek support to pull its military out of Afghanistan.

Part of the deal was to sell or leave behind so-called non-lethal military equipment to fight Islamic extremism and drug trafficking.

Each Airbus C295W military transport plane can carry 70 soldiers and 10 tonnes of kit.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Briton dies in car crash in Azerbaijan

JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – One British national was killed in a car crash in central Baku, media reported. He had been working on the European Games. At the start of Games a bus crashed into Austrian swimmers in the Olympic Village badly injuring one of them.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Georgian Foreign Minister travels to S. America

JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian Foreign Minister Tamar Beruchashvili started a tour of Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, media reported, the first of its kind by a Georgian minister. Ms Beruchashvili said the main aim of the trip was to boost awareness of Georgia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)