Category Archives: Uncategorised

Azerbaijani banks are burdening customers –IWPR

MARCH 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Banks in Azerbaijan are passing on costs triggered by the devaluation of the manat to their clients, the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) said.

The most vulnerable are people who took out loans in foreign currencies before the devaluation.

IWPR quoted local media which attributed two suicides to the devaluation and the sudden increased cost of repaying debt.

It also suggested that the commercial banks have been breaking the law by making people pay back loans at the new, weaker, exchange rate.

The IWPR quoted a Supreme Court judge saying that banks should continue to charge consumers the rate they took the loan out originally.

Experts have warned Azerbaijan that it needs to reduce consumers’ debt burdens to ensure its economic security.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Georgia plans to build windfarm

MARCH 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia plans to build a small windfarm between Tbilisi and Gori to the northwest, media reported. This is the first wind farm in the country and is part-funded by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Uzbekistan to build pipeline to China

MARCH 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan will start building a fourth gas pipeline to China at the end of this year, Interfax news agency quoted an official from the state energy company Uzbekneftegaz as saying. The pipeline is expected to be 260km long and cost around $800m.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Asylum seekers from Azerbaijan rise

MARCH 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The number of asylum seekers from Azerbaijan to Europe is increasing, the United Nations said in a report on global trends.
The latest data from the UN showed that in the first quarter of 2014 641 people from Azerbaijan claimed asylum in Europe, compared to 572 people in the first quarter of 2013.

This is still below the numbers from Azerbaijan’s South Caucasus neighbours — Georgia and Armenia.

Independent observers in Azerbaijan have said that the main driver of asylum seekers — rather than the larger dynamic of economic migrants — is a crackdown by the Azerbaijani authorities on civic activists. Importantly, this has recently also included NGO leaders and journalists who feel persecuted by the authorities as well as opposition figures.

Alovsat Aliyev, head of the Azerbaijan Migration Centre, who has also left Baku to live in Berlin because he worried about persecution said the figures also represented a brain-drain for Azerbaijan.

“Not only do those who are persecuted leave the country, but these are also people who have high capacity of intelligence and don’t want to be part of corrupted system,” he told media.

Azerbaijani asylum seekers mostly use Georgia as a transition country, as it is considered safer than Iran, Turkey and Russia.

The United States the European Union have both called on Azerbaijan to stop its alleged crackdown on civil groups. Several US NGOs and the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have quit Azerbaijan.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Russia bans some Kazakh meat

APRIL 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan has banned sales of some pork products from Russia for health reasons, media reported, although some analysts said the real reason for the ban was worsening trade relations. Kazakh producers have complained of a flood of Russian goods. The devaluation of the Russian rouble has made Russian goods very cheap in Kazakhstan.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Azerbaijan expells HRW activists

APRIL 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani officials expelled a Georgian activist working for the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), media reported. The officials didn’t give any reason for expelling Georgi Gogia who had travelled to Baku to attend the trial of two activists. Relations between Azerbaijan and the West have worsened recently.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Russia is a threat, says Georgian president

MARCH 312015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In his annual address to the nation, Georgian President Georgy Margvelashvili said Russia’s annexation of Crimea and alleged support for rebels in eastern Ukraine threatened to destabilise the region. These were some of the strongest comments yet from Georgia on Ukraine.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Fluor Corp. wins Azerbaijan contract

MARCH 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has appointed the British subsidy of Fluor Corp., a US engineering company, to manage the $16.5b construction of a new oil, gas and petrochemical processing plant outside Baku, media reported.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Dutch company starts building cotton plant in Uzbekistan

MARCH 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – LT Textile Cooperatief, a Dutch company, has started building a $55m cotton processing plant in the south of the country, media quoted a senior Uzbek official as saying. Human rights campaigners have accused Uzbekistan of using child labour to pick its cotton, making association with the industry problematic.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Ukraine wants to buy Turkmen gas

MARCH 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Looking for options to boost its energy supplies and reduce its reliance on Russia, Ukraine has said that it wants to restart importing gas from Turkmenistan.

At a meeting in Kiev, Turkmen foreign minister Rashid Meredov shook hands with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and smiled for the cameras. The two men appeared relaxed.

Media said that Mr Poroshenko had proposed re-starting gas supplies from Turkmenistan to Ukraine, stopped in 2006.

“Ukraine is ready and interested in resuming Turkmen gas imports as an alternative source,” Interfax quoted him as saying.

This will suit Turkmenistan’s agenda. It has been looking to increase its client base and has also hit an increasingly anti-Russia note in its public proclamations over the past few years. Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov blames the Kremlin for the recent regional economic downturn. Russia and Turkmenistan have also argued about gas supplies.

The problem with the plan is that to send gas to Ukraine, Turkmenistan will have to rely on pipelines in Kazakhstan and Russia.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)