JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — At the first session of the lower house of parliament after an election, Uzbek president Islam Karimov said Uzbekistan will never join a group that tries to recreate the USSR. Mr Karimov’s comments appear to be a reference to the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union which includes Kazakhstan, Armenia and Belarus.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
>>Demonstration against closure of political magazine>>
JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a rare show of public dissent in Kazakhstan, a small crowd gathered in Almaty to protest against the closure of weekly opposition newspaper Adam bol”.
Led by the newspaper editor, Gulzhan Yergaliyeva, a group of 25 journalists and activists walked across the Arbat, a pedestrian and commercial zone in the centre of the former capital shouting slogans and waving placards that challenged Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev to rescind the order to close the magazine.
Black-clad security officers stood to the side closely monitoring the protest.
“The presence of ‘men in black’ is always felt at these events,” Dina Baidildayeva a high-profile blogger who filmed the protest told the Bulletin.
The authorities in Kazakhstan have clamped down on political pluralism and media freedom over the past few years, especially in the wake of the Zhanaozen riots in west Kazakhstan in 2011 that killed at least 15 people. Allowing the Adam bol demonstration, therefore, was fairly remarkable.
The newspaper was shut down last November, after it published an article on Ukraine that highlighted Kazakhs fighting in the Ukrainian civil war. The article also questioned Russia’s role in the conflict.
Nate Schenkkan, Central Asia programme officer at the US media watchdog NGO Freedom House, said: “The article on Ukraine could have been just a pretext to do away with an uncomfortable publication for the leadership.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
KYZYLORDA/Kazakhstan, JAN. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Vegetarianism is growing in popularity in Kazakhstan although ordering it successfully can still be a challenge, even for a well-known pop star.
Pasquale Caprino, an Italian singer who goes by the name of Son Pascal and has made Kazakhstan his home, was trying to order a bowl of vegetarian soup at a restaurant in Kyzylorda.
He’d headed out to this remote and barren medium-sized town in south-central Kazakhstan to shoot a music video.
The restaurant was making an effort with its Alpine chalet-style decorations and uniforms for the staff. It contrasted nicely with the concrete skyline outside. In the corner, overlooking the diners was a full-sized taxidermy of a snarling wolf.
Caprino wanted a bowl of cucumber soup without meat. It arrived, though, with sausage floating amongst the ubiquitous dill. Caprino tried again but in Kazakhstan where eating meat, including horsemeat, is ingrained into the national consciousness the waitress thought that she was being teased. He sighed and pushed away the bowl.
This story of frustration for vegetarians is common in Kazakhstan, said Baur Safi and Stanley Currier — two Almaty-based bloggers who run the vegetaristan.com website.
“During holidays or weddings, it is extremely difficult to find anything other than bread and a cucumber and tomato salad that a vegetarian can eat,” said Currier, a native of California.
Safi, a Kazakh, said, though, that it had become far easier in Almaty, at least, to order vegetarian dishes than it had been several years ago. Much of this is down to the introduction of cuisines that don’t use meat rather than any sort of pro-vegetarian groundswell.
“Many locals equate being vegetarian to being gay,” he said. “It’s a question of ethics, as if you’re trying to be special, and of machismo, which is linked to eating meat.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Food prices in Kazakhstan have increased by nearly 20%, the news website zakon.kz reported. Its unofficial survey of prices said they had risen far more than the official Statistics Committee data showed. Wheat, zakon.kz reported, had increased the most with a 25% rise in 2014.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s ministry of culture has said it may ban British tour operator Regent Holidays after the company started advertising trips to Nagorno-Karabakh via Armenia. Azerbaijan and Armenia are still officially at war over Nagorno-Karabakh.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
>>Sackings come shortly after currency devaluation>>
JAN. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — It’s been a busy start to 2015 for Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. He ordered the devaluation by 20% of the manat on Jan. 1 and now he has sacked both the head of the state gas company Turkmengaz and the head of the Central Bank.
Mr Berdymukhamedov appears frustrated at the relative sluggish nature of recent growth in the Turkmen economy. Much of this can be attributed to the 50% fall in energy prices and the drop in the value of the Russian rouble, so important for the economies of Central Asia.
But Mr Berdymukhamedov said that Turkmengaz head Kakageldy Abdullayev was to blame.
“We could have raised production and exports of liquefied gas and other products which are in great demand on world markets,” Reuters quoted him telling a government meeting.
Mr Berdymukhamedov is fond of culling his top officials. Mr Abdullayev had only been in the job for a year. His replacement was named as Charymuhammed Hommadov.
The day before, Mr Berdymukhamedov had also sacked the head of the Central Bank, the head of the state-run Prezidentbank and also the agriculture bank Daikhanbank.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Highlighting the growing attraction of Islamic finance in the region, International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) said it wanted to raise $200m-$300m later this year through a sukuk. A sukuk is the name of an Islamic bond. IBA is a government owned bank. It raised $252m through a sukuk in 2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
>>People in Baku worry that fuel price rises may also accelerate inflation>>
JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Oil prices may be falling on the world market but in Azerbaijan the cost of filling your car with either petrol or diesel has actually increased.
The government announced that it was putting the price of fuel up by 0.02 manat to 0.7 manat ($0.9) for a litre of petrol and 0.62 manat for diesel.
This sounds like a marginal increase only but, given the 50% drop in oil prices, actually represents a sharp rise.
Independent observers say that this is another attempt to fill the state budget, so dependent on oil revenue, with cash.
The government, though, has said the price increase was due to the inclusion of a road tax on oil products produced in Azerbaijan for domestic consumption, as well as imported from abroad.
In a suburb of Baku, 52-year-old taxi driver Ahmed Huseynov was waiting for customers at a taxi rank. It was a damp, dreary afternoon. The roads and rooftops were sodden and slippery after the first snows of the year.
“Every day we hear on the news that oil prices are decreasing which logically should have led to a decrease in fuel prices too,” he said. “I don’t understand the government’s decision.”
Azad Gayibov, 38, a school teacher and father of two, said the fuel price increases will mean careful budget planning for his family. “It does not mean an increase in fuel prices only, but also a deterioration in the entire economy.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
DEC. 27 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — With gas supplies limited this winter, Kyrgyzstan has been reverting back to coal to keep its electricity and heating on, media reported. Media reported that state-owned coalminers produced 1.5m tonnes of coal in the first 11 months of last year, up by 22% from a year earlier.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
JAN. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Currency woes in 2015 quickly translated into inflation across the South Caucasus and Central Asia.
Kazakhstan can be singled out as the worst performer in this department as inflation grew by a staggering 13.6% in 2015.
It was only in November that the minister of economy Yerbolat Dossayev said inflation wouldn’t surpass 10% in 2015. He was clearly wrong.
Interestingly, food prices grew significantly in Kazakhstan (+10.9%), while in Kyrgyzstan it was precisely food items that kept inflation from going too high.
Kyrgyzstan’s 11-month inflation in 2015 was 6.8% overall, but food prices decreased by 4.8% (Jan. 5).
Geostat, the Georgian statistics service, said annual inflation amounted to 4.9% in December, a 0.6% deflation compared to the previous month driven by lower transport and fuel prices, another impact of low oil prices.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)