Category Archives: Uncategorised

Uzbekistan, India aim to triple trade

TASHKENT/OCT. 1 (The Conway Bulletin) — At a meeting in Delhi, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Indian PM Narendra Modi promised to deepen bilateral relations with a specific focus on trade.

Central to their ambition is an agreement to increase bilateral trade to $1b a year by 2020, tripling the current volume. Areas of focus include agriculture, tourism, military education, justice, health and medical science and pharmaceuticals. Specific trade agreements were signed between the Uzbek region of Andijan and Gujarat and also between Samarkand and Agra.

Mr Mirziyoyev said that a strategic partnership with India was a priority.

“We have agreed to closely cooperate in the sphere of developing a new transport connectivity corridor,” he said.

India wants to boost its influence in Central Asia to counterbalance the dominance of China and also to improve its access to natural resources and electricity.
ENDS
>>This story was published in issue 387 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 1 2018

Moscow Stock Exchange buys 20% stake in KASE

Karachaganak partners agree to pay Kazakhstan $1.1b

Leave a Reply

ALMATY/OCT. 1 (The Conway Bulletin) — The partners developing the Karachagank oil and gas site, a cornerstone of Kazakhstan’s energy production, agreed to pay the Kazakh government $1.1b, settling a long-running dispute over profit sharing.

Kazakhstan will also receive an estimated $415m in extra revenue by 2037, based on the price of oil at $80/barrel, in the new profit sharing deal.

For the Karachaganak partners — Shell, ENI, Lukoil, Chevron and Kazmunaigas — and their shareholders, the deal marks the end of a dispute that could have severely undermined the project from 2015 when Kazakh officials first accused the consortium of an unfair profit sharing deal. None of the partners have yet commented on the deal.

The final $1.1b agreed fee is less than the initial $1.6b that Kazakhstan had pushed, although the additional earnings will probably take it close to that amount.

There is also a $1b long-term loan that the consortium has agreed to give to Kazakhstan to develop its regions.

The partners have also committed to spending $5b on upgrading the site to ensure that production continues.

Karachaganak is one of the most important oil and gas projects in Kazakhstan producing nearly 50% of its gas and 18% of its oil production.
This year, Kazakhstan has increased oil production by 5.3% to 60m tonnes by the end of August, the Kazakh energy ministry said earlier this month.

ENDS
>>This story was published in issue 387 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 1 2018

Uzbek opposition activist returns home

Leave a Reply

SEPT. 26 (The Conway Bulletin) – Prominent Uzbek opposition activist Tolib Yoqubov, 78, returned to Uzbekistan for the first time in more than a decade from Paris where he had been living in exile. Mr Yoqubov had been a persistent critic of former Uzbek leader Islam Karimov and had fled the country in 2007, fearing for his life. Current Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev is planning to visit Paris next month to meet with French Pres. Emmanuel Macron.
-ENDS-
>>This story was published in issue 387 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 1 2018

UNM candidate heads Georgian presidential election poll

Leave a Reply

SEPT. 28 (The Conway Bulletin) – A poll for the Rustavi-2 TV station in Georgia said that Grigol Vashadze of the United National Movement party, the party of former president Mikheil Saakashvili, was favourite to win the first round of a presidential election set for Oct. 28 with 22% of the votes. Second in the opinion poll was Davit Bakradze of European Georgia with 18%. Salome Zurabishvili, endorsed by the ruling Georgian Dream, came in third. Opinion polls in Georgia are notoriously fickle. This is the last vote for a directly elected president in Georgia. If there is no clear winner the top two go into a second round.
ENDS
>>This story was published in issue 387 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 1 2018

Armenia increases defence spending

Leave a Reply

SEPT. 29 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia plans to increase its defence budget by 25% to 307b dram ($625m), media reported quoting the government’s draft 2019 budget. This increase in defence spending comes after a 17.6% increase in 2018. Armenia is still officially at war with Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
-ENDS-
>>This story was published in issue 387 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 1 2018

Yandex Taxi to expand in Uzbekistan

Leave a Reply

SEPT. 25 (The Conway Bulletin) – Yandex Taxi said it wants to expand its services into secondary Uzbek cities after successfully launching in Tashkent. Quoting a senior official at the company, media reported that Yandex Taxi had asked the Uzbek government for help in mapping Samarkand, Bukhara, Urgench and Andijan before extending taxi services.
ENDS
>>This story was published in issue 387 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 1 2018

Tension rises around Nagorno-Karabakh

Leave a Reply

SEPT. 25/28 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia-backed forces in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh staged fighter-jet exercises that the Azerbaijani defence ministry immediately condemned as ‘provocative’. Observers have warned that tension over the disputed region is running at a near all-time high. A UN ceasefire organised in 1994 keeps a shaky peace over Nagorno-Karabakh, although fighting broke out in 2016.
-ENDS-
>>This story was published in issue 387 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 1 2018

Moscow Stock Exchange buys 20% stake in KASE

Leave a Reply

ALMATY/SEPT. 27 (The Conway Bulletin) — — The Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX) said it will buy a 20% stake in the Almaty-based Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) for 338m roubles ($5.2m).

The deal raises questions about the Astana Stock Exchange that opened this year and has been feted by Kazakh officials as the financial market that will attract serious global capital to Kazakhstan.

Neither MOEX nor KASE, which was set-up in 1993 and has been derided as an illiquid relic, have commented on the deal but in April Alexander Afanasiev, CEO of the Moscow Stock Exchange, had said, when a memorandum of understanding was signed, that a tie-up would improve the liquidity of both markets.

“This partnership is an important step towards integration of the markets of the Eurasian Economic Union,” he said. “Investors in both countries will receive access to new instruments, while issuers will enjoy new sources of capital.”

To the north, the Astana Stock Exchange, sited within the government-backed Astana International Finance Center, was launched to much fanfare this year. Since then, though, there has been little news. It has been promised the domestic IPOs of some of Kazakhstan’s largest companies, including Air Astana, Kazatomprom and Kazmunaigas, when they launch international IPOs this year or in 2019.
ENDS
>>This story was published in issue 387 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 1 2018

GE signs deals for Kazakh turbines

Leave a Reply

SEPT. 27 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US’ GE signed a deal to sell 12 wind turbines to ENI’s 48MW wind farm in Badamsha in north-east Kazakhstan for an undisclosed amount. Kazakhstan has commissioned several wind farms across the country as it looks to hit green energy targets. The Badamsha project is expected to be the first operational wind farm in Kazakhstan when it starts producing power by the end of 2019.
ENDS
>>This story was published in issue 387 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 1 2018

Carrefour to open second Armenia store

Leave a Reply

YEREVAN/SEPT. 28 (The Conway Bulletin) — — French hypermarket brand Carrefour is likely to open its second store in Yerevan in October, France’s ambassador to Armenia, Jonathan Lacote, told media.

The opening of another Carrefour store in Yerevan is another sign that Armenia is recovering efficiently from a 2014-17 regional economic downturn. Carrefour opened its first store in Armenia in 2015.

Nikol Pashinyan, Armenian PM since a revolution in April and May, was also quick to hold up the promise of a second Carrefour store as evidence that the country’s fortunes had improved under his careful leadership.

He said that Carrefour had been considering downsizing when he took over as PM.

“One of my first actions was to visit the Carrefour supermarket, because at the time I took office Carrefour was the only supermarket operating lawfully,” he said. “I can now say that this process (of downsizing) is suspended and the process of expansion is guaranteed.”

Carrefour store openings and closings have become important economic barometers in the region. In May 2017, Carrefour closed its only store in Kazakhstan, just 15 months after Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev had opened it, because of weak economic conditions.

By contrast in Georgia, which has had a strong economic resurgence, Carrefour has said it wants to open a third hypermarket.

Dubai-based Majid Al Futtaim operates the Carrefour franchises in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. There are currently 10 Carrefour supermarkets and two hypermarkets in Georgia, one hypermarket in Armenia and one in Tajikistan.
ENDS
>>This story was published in issue 387 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 1 2018