FEB. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhmys, one of the biggest employers in Kazakhstan, said it was stopping work on a handful of side projects and making 2,000 people redundant. Kazakhmys’ main product is copper although it employs thousands more people in support businesses such as coal mining. The news piles more pressure on Kazakhstan’s economy.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015)
FEB. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Alexander Medvedev, vice-chairman of Gazprom, Russia’s gas monopoly, said the company would cut gas it buys from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Mr Medvedev did not specify why Gazprom had cut its orders from Turkmenistan by 60% and from Uzbekistan by 75% but it may be linked to Russia’s economic downturn.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015)
JAN. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Global Fund, a Switzerland-based health organisation, said corrupt suppliers had swindled $5m from an HIV/AIDS awareness project in Kazakhstan. The corruption highlights the extent of the problems facing foreign companies and organisations in Kazakhstan.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015
>>Russia pledges new gas infrastructure system>>
JAN. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — On a trip to Bishkek, Alexei Miller, the CEO of Gazprom, said the Russian state-owned gas company would invest $500m into Kyrgyzstan’s gas network system over the next three years.
This is a massive investment by Russia into what is essentially its backyard, especially during these times of economic turbulence. Gas has become a form of diplomacy and control for the Kremlin and it wants to bring Kyrgyzstan closer into its hegemony.
“This is 1.7 times larger than originally planned,” media quoted Mr Miller as saying of the proposed investment plan. “All the planned works will be financed in full.”
Gazprom bought Kyrgyzstan’s gas monopoly for a symbolic $1 in 2013. This year the Kremlin has already earned credit for negotiating a deal between the Uzbek and the Kyrgyz authorities to supply gas to the south of Kyrgyzstan.
And influence over Bishkek is important for Russia. Over the past decade Kyrgyzstan has swung between supporting the West to looking towards the Kremlin. Now that the US military base outside Bishkek has been dismantled (it went last year) the Kremlin has upped its drive to pull Bishkek closer towards it.
Later this year, Kyrgyzstan plans to join the Kremlin-controlled Eurasian Economic Union. It has sold its gas system to Gazprom and has introduced various legislation that apes Russian laws and, many analysts say, curtails personal freedoms.
Russian dominance over Kyrgyzstan is growing.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015)
MO’YNOQ/Uzbekistan, FEB. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Sagynbai Murzayev is a strong and gentle Soviet-made man in his 70s. He used to be a fisherman in windswept Mo’ynoq, a town in Karakalpakstan which lies on the remote western fringe of Uzbekistan. Now he works several jobs and witnesses the Chinese influx.
Mo’ynoq once lay on the shores of the Aral Sea. This sea, though, shrunk rapidly because a Soviet irrigation system siphoned off its tributaries’ waters to feed giant cotton fields.
Left behind is a lunar desert of white dunes that locals call Aralkum (Aral’s Sands).
Murzayev works at the local museum of natural history and has witnessed the retreat from the beginning. His father was also a fisherman, his mother worked in a fishery. He now gathers most of his earnings by driving foreign guests to the sea shores. Most of the visitors are Chinese.
Since 2006 an energy consortium led by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has been exploring oil and gas deposits below the former seabed.
Although national Uzbek publications boast about Karakalpakstan’s growth as an energy-rich region, operations in the Ustyurt Plateau seem, to Murzayev at least, to proceed at a slow pace. The few Chinese workers camping on the shoreline are mainly after a rather different and rather unusual resource for Central Asia — shrimps.
Unexcited, Murzayev looked at a Chinese trawler coming ashore.
“The indiscriminate pillage of natural resources has already been proved to be detrimental for us,” he said. “We need to bring the sea back to life and not to scavenge its dead body.”
In the distance, the town’s crumbling homes are a symbol of the small economic advantages that this uncertain oil and gas bonanza can bring to the region. And all the while the fading memories of the local fisherman who used to work on the lake grow thinner and thinner.
>>By Gianluca Pardelli
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015)
JAN. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s GDP grew by nearly 5% in 2014, media reported, a healthy spurt despite pressures from a faltering Russian economy and a drop in global oil prices (Jan. 30).
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015)
JAN. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Kazakhstan have jailed a woman in the western city of Aktau for spreading audio files online that supported the Islamic extremist group IS. Kazakhstan has become increasingly sensitive to IS propaganda. IS has targeted Central Asia as a recruitment ground.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015
JAN. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian defence minister, Anatoly Anatonov, emphasised once again that Russia wanted to strengthen its garrison in Tajikistan because of a perceived increase in threat from the Taliban now that NATO forces have withdrawn from Afghanistan. Russia has around 7,000 soldiers in Tajikistan, its largest overseas base.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015)
JAN. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tension between Azerbaijan and Armenia is worsening. Azerbaijan said it shot down an Armenian military drone and the OSCE, Europe’s democracy watchdog, called for restraint as more soldiers were killed. In a New York Times story, expert Thomas de Waal said: “This is as bad as it has got since the (1994) cease-fire.”
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015)
JAN. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In Dushanbe, the mayor’s office has banned activists from the opposition Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan from pinning up pre-election posters around the city, media reported (Jan. 28).
The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan is the only genuine opposition party running in a parliamentary election on March 1. It has popular support but has been increasingly marginalised by the authorities under President Emomali Rakhmon. He has strengthened his control over Tajik society and politics over the past few years, especially hyping up the perceived threat from the more religious elements.
Media said that this ban on electioneering in Tajikistan was new and had not been imposed during previous elections, suggesting another round of restrictions ahead of the election.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015)