NOV. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Aiming to give tourism a lift, Armenia said it would join the EU-funded Black Sea Silk Road Corridor which already includes Georgia, Turkey and Greece. The focus of the corridor is a 3,000km path that weaves through 150 cultural sites. Armenia’s government has earmarked tourism as a way of boosting the economy.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has predicted that inflation in Kyrgyzstan will hit 10% in 2015 after it joins the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. The biggest jump in prices, the ADB said, will be a 30% rise in petrol when prices are brought into line with Kazakhstan and Russia.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – At least one of the thousands of inmates freed last week under a massive amnesty sanctioned by Tajikistan’s government to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the national constitution appears to have been let out too soon.
Tabur Gafurov, 31, killed his 55-year-old father during a heated argument after he returned to his family home in Sogd region, northern Tajikistan, reported Tajik outlet Asia Plus.
The incident has called into question Dushanbe’s decision to release so many prisoners at once, undermining what one regular observer of politics in the country says is an attempt by President Emomali Rakhmon to project his domestic political power.
“The amnesty is classic authoritarianism at work,” he said. “He wants the population to know that he can give freedom or take it away as he pleases,” he said.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s exports totalled $24.4b in the nine months to the end of September, media reported quoting the state statistics agency, but only $1.2b of this figure came in non-energy products. The figure highlights just how dependent Azerbaijan is on energy exports.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian mobile provider MTS is testing equipment ahead of its re-entry into Uzbekistan, media reported. MTS, which is owned by Russia’s Sistema, quit Uzbekistan after a major row with the authorities in 2012 over alleged unpaid tax bills. It since appears to have made up and has agreed to return to the country.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia plans to re-establish its Interior Ministry ahead of joining the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union.
PM Hovik Abrahamian said that several ministries would be merged together to create an Interior Ministry, which was abandoned in 2002.
“Nineteen ministries is too many for Armenia,” the official Armenpress news agency quoted Mr Abrahamian as saying. “In the future we will turn the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Ministry of Local Government into the Ministry of Internal Affairs as it is the case in many European countries.”
In the former Soviet space the Interior Ministry is one of the more powerful government institutions. It has its own army and is tasked with imposing internal security and order. In 2002, Armenia disbanded the Interior Ministry and handed these pseudo military powers to the police force. This will now revert back to the Interior Ministry.
Armenia is joining the Eurasian Economic Union in the New Year, a group that already includes Belarus and Kazakhstan alongside Russia. Kyrgyzstan is also intending to join.
All these countries have a strong Interior Ministry. It’s likely that joining the Eurasian Economic Union and re-establishing the Interior Ministry in Armenia are linked.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan is looking to bolster its military, media reported quoting Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov from a transcript of a meeting at the National Security Council. Mr Berdymukhamedov is concerned about Taliban activity on its border with Afghanistan. Turkmen forces have built strengthen defences in some border areas this year.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Protests continued across parts of Kazakhstan over petrol shortages. One protest, captured in a photo essay on the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website showed four men pulling a Soviet-era car to a petrol station near Almaty with a donkey cart.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The fallout from the sacking of Georgian defence minister Irakli Alasania rumbled on. As predicted, Georgia’s foreign minister, Maia Panjikidze, and minister for European integration, Aleksi Petriashvili, both also resigned.
They belong to the same party as Mr Alasania, the Free Democrats. The party also withdrew its support for the Georgian Dream coalition, wiping out its majority in parliament.
Mr Alasania was officially sacked for insubordination after he criticised the arrest of ministry of defence officials for alleged corruption.
These sackings weaken the government of PM Irakli Garibashvili. They have also created a potentially dangerous political enemy in Mr Alasania. He was one of the most charismatic ministers and could drum up support to challenge the government.
For now, though, Mr Garibashvili and his patron, former PM and leader of the Georgian Dream coalition Bidzina Ivanishvili, were quick to deride Mr Alasania as an ambitious adventurer.
The coalition that Mr Ivanishvili created and that Mr Garibashvili leads had been built for one main purpose — to topple Mikheil Saakashvili from power. With that ambition achieved in parliamentary election in 2012 and presidential elections in 2013 it was always likely that the coalition was going to unravel. This unravelling is a natural re-balancing of Georgian politics.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The sharp fall in the price of oil has acted as a wake-up call for Kazakhstan, economy minister Kairat Kelimbetov said in an interview with the FT.
Virtually admitting that Kazakhstan had been caught off guard by the decline by roughly a third in the price of oil since June, Mr Kelimbetovsaid that the government was the economy and to make it planning measures to shore up more attractive to investors.
“Next month the government will be ready to announce some counter cyclical fiscal policy, with big plans in infrastructure,” he said in the interview in Almaty.
Economists have warned that a devaluing rouble and falling oil prices will combined to knock Kazakhstan’s growth rate.
And the falling economy is also knocking investor confidence. Energy analyst Sergei Smirnov said that with Brent oil prices falling to a four year low of $82/barrel it makes projects such as Kashagan unprofitable.
“Offshore oil production is always much more expensive than onshore production,” he said according to media.
Kazakh officials who have staked their credibility and the country’s economic prosperity on Kasahgan but the project is already behind schedule and running over budget.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)