MAY 26 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Underlining Turkmenistan’s growing status, Turkmen foreign minister Rashid Meredov met with his Azerbaijani and Turkish counterparts for what was dubbed as the first of regular tri-lateral talks. Energy featured on the agenda. Over the past 5 years Turkmenistan has become a regional energy super-power.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Saudi Arabia’s Savola Group has sold its food oil business in Kazakhstan to a Russian company for $28.5m, Reuters reported. Savola didn’t name the Russian company. It said that the sale was part of a strategy to divest units that were not making money.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan has taken another big step towards opening Asia’s first carbon market. The European Energy Exchange (EEX), based in Leipzig in Germany, said it had signed a deal with company called Caspi JSC to help develop the carbon emissions trading scheme, media reported.
A carbon emissions market has existed in Europe for several years and Kazakhstan wants to tap into this knowledge. It’s an ambitious project but one that would benefit both Kazakhstan’s environment and its profile in Asia.
Media quoted Yelnar Nadyrgaliyev, chairman of the board of Caspi JSC.
“EEX has high expertise in operating a regulated market for emissions trading,” he said. “We are pleased to be able to benefit from that as this will be a crucial success factor in establishing an emissions market in Kazakhstan.”
Kazakhstan signed up to the Kyoto Protocols in 2009. This is the international standard, named after the Japanese city in which the treaty was signed, by which countries measure their carbon emissions output. They pledged to reduce them to below 1990 levels.
Kazakhstan is still pumping out roughly 20% less carbon emissions today than it was in 1990, when big business was booming during the Soviet Union, but since the mid-2000s its output has shot up by 40%.
Perhaps understanding that action was needed, and probably with an eye on the green agenda of his centrepiece EXPO-2017, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev introduced a cap on emissions by the country’s top 178 companies.
These companies need to, theoretically, buy credit to increase emissions. Not surprisingly, they’re not happy.
Regardless, signing up EEX, Europe’s largest power market, is an important step to creating a genuine carbon emissions trading market in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A senior Turkmen official accused Afghan insurgents of killing three border guards, the second alleged shootings this year.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) quoted Asal Khan, the acting governor of Ghormach district in northern Afghanistan, as saying that insurgents attacked a Turkmen border post on May 24.
Turkmen officials haven’t confirmed the attack, RFE/RL said.
If the attack is confirmed it will be important to ascertain quickly who the apparent insurgents are. Are they smugglers — Turkmenistan is, afterall, on the heroin route from Afghanistan to Europe — or are they Taliban?
If the answer is Taliban, then Central Asian governments will fret. They have said that they are worried about the spread north of the Taliban after the withdrawal of most NATO forces from Afghanistan by the end of this year.
In March, three Turkmen border guards also died after an apparent attack by insurgents. Is this the beginning of a more worrying development along Central Asia’s borders?
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atamabayev said that he would respect the constitution which limits him to one 6-year term in office, media reported. Mr Atambayev was voted into power in 2011. His election was the first peaceful transition of power in Kyrgyzstan since the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an interview with Russian TV, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko described how former Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev phoned him from a forest in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010 after fleeing protesters and begged him for help. Mr Lukashenko gave Mr Bakiyev residence in Belarus.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh lawmakers have drafted a new bill which will impose a prison sentence of up to six years on anybody who fails to report information on attacks linked to terrorism, media reported. Critics of the bill say a new law could be abused by the security services.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – MTS, the Russian mobile operator, is planning a return to Uzbekistan, two years after it quit the country after a major row with the authorities.
Vladimir Evtushenkov, the Russian billionaire whose company Sistema owns the majority state in MTS, told reporters at the St Petersburg Economic Forum that the company may re-enter Uzbekistan as early as this year.
Given MTS’s acrimonious exit from Uzbekistan, after a row over unpaid tax, Mr Evtushenkov’s statement took people by surprise.
Through its local subsidiary, MTS had been the biggest mobile provider in Uzbekistan. Its abrupt exit in 2012 had cost it 9m subscribers and losses of $1b.
But it’s a positive surprise that MTS is seriously considering a return to Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan is the single biggest market in Central Asia, with a population of 30m, and should be a natural country of operations for a Russian mobile company.
Of course, though, as with everything in Uzbekistan, MTS’s re-entry is possibly layered with extra meaning. It may not be a coincidence that it is considering a return to Uzbekistan just as Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek leader Islam Karimov, appears to have suffered a serious setback to her power and influence.
When MTS did clash with the Uzbek authorities in 2012, the rumour mill was full of stories that the company had fallen out with Ms Karimova. That problem may now have been solved, allowing MTS to patch up its differences with the Uzbek authorities.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan delayed a ban on imports of cars lacking some safety features from the GM car plant in Uzbekistan, media reported, a boost for the Uzbek car-making sector. Earlier this year reports said that the Nexus and Matiz models would be banned from January. The ban will now not be imposed until July.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
PAVLODAR/Kazakhstan, MAY 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Vitaly couldn’t get his words out fast enough. His jowly cheeks seemed to wobble with enthusiasm.
“Yes, if Putin did say that he wanted northern Kazakhstan we would support it,” he said. Putin was a reference, of course, to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
His friend shot him a quick look and interjected.
“But we’re happy to be part of Kazakhstan too. This is our home,” he said, shoving his hands into his tracksuit trousers. “Pavlodar is a comfortable place to live.”
The men, who were in their mid-20s, were standing on a scruffy street near the centre of this city of 330,000 people in northern Kazakhstan. It was built by the Russian empire on the banks of the serene Irtysh River which flows more than 4,000km from western Kazakhstan, into Russia’s Siberia and the Ob river system that eventually disgorges into the Arctic Sea.
From Pavlodar, the Russian border is barely 100km away.
Since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March, attention in Kazakhstan has focused on its northern regions. Here ethnic Russians outnumber Kazakhs and Russian, not Kazakh, is the main language spoken. Firebrand Russian politicians have urged Putin to turn it into Russia.
Pavlodar feels harmonious but there is an underlying tension that is not hard to find. And it worries people.
Anara, an ethnic Kazakh lawyer, was walking home from work along one of Pavlodar’s wide, tree-lined streets.
“People have always lived well together but after Crimea people are talking about it. What happens if Putin decides he wants to take northern Kazakhstan?” she said. “In Pavlodar and Petropavlovsk the main language is Russian. He could do it.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)