May 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Halyk Bank, the second largest bank in Kazakhstan, said its profit in the first three months of the year had almost doubled. Importantly, Halyk said much of this profit increase was due to a fall in the amount of poor loans on its books, an issue Kazakh banks have been grappling with since the 2008/9 economic crisis.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In 2013, Kazakhstan convicted 31 policemen of using torture, media reported.
This is an important statistic as it shows that the Kazakh authorities are not just paying lip service to the idea of reducing the use of torture by the security forces to obtain confessions, a routine criticism of Central Asian states by human rights groups.
The deputy prosecutor of Kazakhstan, Zhakyp Asanov, said that the number of investigations against Kazakh police in the past five years had increased tenfold. This, he said, underlined Kazakhstan’s commitment to improving human rights.
“We react to reports of torture immediately and take all required measures to investigate the report,” Mr Asanov said. Of course these actions are welcome and there are signs that this more humane approach to detainees is taking shape in Kazakhstan.
Earlier this year, a Kazakh court upheld a compensation claim ordered against the police for the torture of a man held in detention in March 2007.
That said, there is a lot more to do. Torture as a method to extract confessions from detainees is still fairly routine in Kazakhstan, rather than being isolated incidences, as Mr Asanov’s figures tend to suggest. Prison conditions are also considered poor.
In a report in 2013, Amnesty International said it “accused the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, of pulling the wool over the eyes of the international community in his government’s promise to eradicate torture and fully investigate the lethal force by police.”
Its report described torture as rife in Kazakh detention centres.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek police arrested Russian businessman Alexander Pozdeev in Tashkent, media reported. Mr Pozdeev is, reportedly, head of the Zapadno-Uralsky Machine- Building Factory in Russia. Media reports were unclear exactly why police had arrested Mr Pozdeev although they said it may be linked to an environmental accident.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan and Afghanistan are discussing setting up economic free zones, media reported after a meeting between their economy ministers in Dushanbe. Although no agreements were signed, this is a sign that Central Asian states want to incorporate Afghanistan into their economic area.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin)- The consortium of companies developing the giant Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea will have to replace the entire pipeline system, Kazakhstan’s oil and gas minister Uzakbai Karabalin said. The massive rebuild may delay the re-start of Kashagan beyond 2015.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – NATO officially opened its representative office in Tashkent, a year after setting it up. NATO has been cultivating improved relations with Uzbekistan because it wants to extract most of its kit from Afghanistan back to Europe through the Uzbek railway network.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin)- In 2020, Kazakhstan will probably introduce a new pension scheme that will deduct 5% of an employee’s wages and automatically place it in a government plan, the labour ministry told the Tengrinews website.
Employers will match this employee contribution.
It appears that these planned reforms haven’t been announced more widely and loudly because of a very real fear of upsetting people.
The risk for Kazakhstan is fairly obvious. In Armenia a similar plan triggered widespread demonstrations. The problem is that Kazakhstan and other former Soviet States need to reform and update their pension schemes.
Last year, the Kazakh labour sacked its ministers because of backlash over trying to make women retire at the same age as men.
Persuading Kazakhs to accept the latest plan is also likely to be a serious challenge for the Kazakh government.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Industrial production in Azerbaijan increased by 5.1% in the first 4 months of the year, the state stats committee reported. The data is more good news for Azerbaijan’s economy. Last month, the Central Bank cut interest rates to its lowest level for three years.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin)- In a rare admission of rampant corruption, Kyrgyzstan’s government announced it would dissolve Agroprod, the commercial arm of the ministry of agriculture. Agroprod was considered riven through with corruption and inefficiencies. It’s unclear what the Kyrgyz government plans to replace Agroprod with.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 18/19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev travelled to Hanoi for his first trip to Vietnam. While there he signed various agreements with his Vietnamese counterpart Truong Tan Sang to deepen bi- lateral relations. Like Azerbaijan, Vietnam is also developing its off-shore energy industry.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)