OCT. 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh lower house of parliament ratified an extradition treaty with Italy, media reported, part of a process by Kazakhstan to update its legal treaties. Last year, Kazakhstan illegally transferred the wife of the then fugitive businessman Mukhtar Ablyazov from Rome.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A series of murders of women by their husbands or ex-husbands in Georgia has triggered the government into action, the civil.ge website reported. The website said 20 women have been murdered this year. The government has pledged tough action on domestic violence although it is still unclear what this pledge means.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh officials have earmarked four cities — Almaty, Astana, Aktobe and Shymkent — to develop as mega cities. The plan to create four hubs, which has overtures of Soviet economic planning, will cost an estimated $4b and run through to 2020.
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(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)
OCT. 8-9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev flew to Brussels to sign a deal that will bring Kazakhstan, economically, closer to the European Union.
Concerns, though, over Kazakhstan’s human rights and corruption records threatened to overshadow Mr Nazarbayev’s trip. He is also facing increased pressure over Kazakhstan’s alliance with Russia which is accused of aiding separatist fighters in Ukraine.
European Union and United States sanctions on Russia have hit linked-in economies, including Kazakhstan.
“Sanctions, especially economic ones, are not helpful to anyone neither Europe, nor Kazakhstan or Russia,” Mr Nazarbayev said at a joint press conference with Jose Manuel Barroso, the EU’s outgoing chief.
The EU-Kazakhstan agreement, which took nearly four years to sign, will boost Kazakhstan’s application to enter the World Trade Organisation, enhance energy and security cooperation and air travel links.
The so-called Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement also makes Kazakhstan the European Union’s most important partner both in Central Asia and the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union.
Importantly tariffs remain unchanged as they are central to the Eurasian Economic Union that Kazakhstan is a member of alongside Russia and Belarus.
And this is important. Kazakhstan is trying to play both Russia and the European Union with its self-described multi-vector foreign policy. While Mr Nazarbayev talked with the European Union, Kazakh senators in Astana ratified a new Eurasian Economic Union treaty.
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(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)
OCT. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – As expected, Armenia signed a deal in Minsk with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan to join the Eurasian Economic Union. The Eurasian Economic Union will come into effect from Jan. 1 as the successor of the Customs Union. The Kremlin sees the Eurasian Economic Union as a counterbalance to the EU.
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(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)
OCT. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s president Giorgi Margvelashvili has said he wants to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin, Russian news agency Interfax reported. Georgia-Russia relations have improved since a 2008 war. Kremlin intervention in Ukraine, though, has threatened to damage them once again.
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(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)
OCT. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Norwegian energy company Statoil sold its final 15.5% stake in the Shah Deniz oil field in the Azerbaijani Caspian Sea to Malaysia’s Petronas for $2.25b.
Officially, Statoil said the sale was part of a worldwide reorganisation. For the partners in Shah Deniz, though, the sale represents yet another major shake-up of one of Azerbaijan’s biggest energy projects.
The sale is also another indicator that Western energy companies are looking to reign in investments that require large capital commitments.
In May, Statoil sold a 10% stake in Shah Deniz to BP and SOCAR and French energy company Total sold its 10% stake in the project to TPAO. For its part, Petronas has been looking to diversify its energy assets across the world.
The other shareholders in Shah Deniz are: BP (28.8% of the project); Turkey’s TPAO (19%); Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR (16.7%); Russia’s Lukoil (10%) and National Iranian Oil Company (10%).
Clearly the diverse nature of Shah Deniz’s stakeholders makes it a complex project. Azerbaijan is also staking much of its future riches on the success of the project and Europe is hoping to pump around a fifth of its gas from Shah Deniz over the next few years.
Statoil’s deal with Petronas also included selling its stakes in the South Caucasus pipeline. It kept, though, its 8.56% stake in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oil field and also its 20% stake in the TAP pipeline that will pump gas from Azerbaijan to Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)
OCT. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – It appears from news reports that Turkmenistan is continuing to bolster its defences against possible Taliban attacks. The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said that its correspondent in northern Afghanistan had reported construction work along the border.
“A source for Azatlyk (RFE/RL’s local service) in northern Afghanistan said Turkmenistan has increased its troop strength in several places along the border with Afghanistan recently and in the area where three of Turkmenistan’s border guards were killed in February the border guards have been replaced by spetsnazi, elite commandos,” RFE/RL reported.
“The source added that some areas now have fences, three rows deep, blocking access from the Afghan side.”
Central Asian countries have previously voiced concern that the Taliban would spread northwards after NATO had withdrawn.
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(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)
OCT. 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tesco, the world’s second largest retailer, has signed up to an agreement not to buy cotton from Uzbekistan because of concerns over its use of child labour to pick it, media reported.
The timing will particularly hurt Uzbekistan as Tesco’s move comes on the eve of the annual Uzbekistan cotton trade show on Oct. 14. This set piece event is supposed to showcase Uzbek cotton — one of the country’s biggest exports.
The problem for Uzbekistan is that its use of deploying school children, teachers and doctors to harvest the cotton has made buying it taboo.
“Markets for Uzbek cotton sourced with forced labour continue to diminish as consumers become more aware of the egregious human rights violations that occur during the Uzbek cotton harvest, with over 4m Uzbek citizens forced to pick cotton under threat of penalty,” the advocacy group Responsible Source Network (RSN) said on its website after announcing that Tesco had agreed to support it.
To an extent, RSN is correct. More and more Western retailers are looking to stop buying clothes made with Uzbek cotton. Uzbekistan last year also allowed the United Nation’s International Labour organisation (ILO) to tour the country at harvest season and inspect reports of child labour.
It’s likely, campaigners have said, that child labour is still used in Uzbekistan but this has been reduced over the past few years.
And, there is a flip side. With Western companies trying to stop using Uzbek cotton, Uzbekistan has looked east to potential clients who are less squeamish about human rights. Bangladesh has become a key importer of Uzbek cotton.
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(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)
ALMATY/Kazakhstan, OCT. 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The uniformed women with bright orange hair posted at the entrance of the Soviet-era exhibition hall in Almaty, the Palace of the Republic, were stern and explicit. Nobody was allowed in.
Behind them it was clear why.
Waves of women in turquoise suits were exiting the building, some in pairs and some in small groups.
And at the side of the Palace of the Republic, a fleet of new, shiny cars were parked, all painted an almost metallic pale pink.
The suits. The impeccably made up women wearing them. The cars. Could it be? Yes, it could. A Mary Kay convention is in town.
Mary Kay, the American cosmetics company founded by US businesswoman Mary Kay Ash back in 1963, has aggressively expanded in a range of new markets. By the looks of it this includes Kazakhstan.
The uniform tailored suits are a hallmark of Mary Kay saleswomen, and the cars are a reference to the founder’s pink Cadillac, which has become a trademark for top salespeople.
Convention participants, mainly middle-aged, filtered out of the Palace of the Republic. Some posed in front of the brutalist Hotel Kazakhstan just adjacent to the Palace; others made their way via the subway under Dostyk Avenue to Kimep Grill, a canteen in the basement of the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics, & Strategic Research. Here the food is cheap and decent and the queues are long.
The mostly ethnic Kazakh students seemed wildly amused at the uniformed women in their midst. One laughed and then turned to her friend: “They’re all dressed the same.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)