MARCH 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Jahangir Hajiyev, chairman of the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), resigned for health reasons. IBA is the biggest bank in Azerbaijan and has close ties to the government. Emil Mustafayev, a deputy chairman, was appointed interim chairman.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a public speech, President Ilham Aliyev blamed the international community for launching an anti-Azerbaijan campaign ahead of the European Games this summer.
This is important because analysts have been saying that Mr Aliyev has increasingly turned his back on the West. The United States and the EU have been increasingly vocal critics of his clampdown on civic society.
“This campaign, in fact, has never been stopped, but in the run-up to important international events this campaign becomes even uglier,” he said.
“We were faced with it three years ago in 2012, on the eve of the Eurovision contest. We are seeing it today, on the eve of the European Games. This is a well-coordinated anti-Azerbaijani campaign managed from one or several centres.”
The inaugural European Games, set to be staged in Baku in June, is a sensitive issue for Mr Aliyev.
He desperately wants to showcase Azerbaijan and to gloss over its more unsightly aspects such as a stalling economy and criticism over its human rights record.
According to the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Azerbaijan is spending $4b on the European Games.
In his speech Mr Aliyev stated that the main reason for the campaign is the current strength of the country. “
“It is also natural that the stronger Azerbaijan gets, the more pressure it comes under. Our independent policy is not to everyone’s liking though,” he said.
Erkin Gadirli of the ReAl oppositional movement said in an interview to Berlin-based Meydan TV that Mr Aliyev’s speech showed that he was increasingly paranoid about criticism in the international media.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Giving a boost to the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline project (TANAP), BP said it was close to a deal to become one of its stakeholders.
In an interview with Reuters, Chris Schlueter, BP country manager in Georgia, said good progress on a deal had been made.
“We are very, very close,” he said. “I think (we will sign the deal) in the next two months.”
Shares in BP rose on the news.
TANAP is seen as a vital plank of the EU’s future energy policy, diversifying away from Russia. It will carry Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian Sea, across Georgia, Turkey and the Balkans to central Europe.
Analysts have said that they consider it vital that, alongside Turkish and Azerbaijani companies, BP is a major shareholder in the project.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Armenia-backed government of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh said that Azerbaijani forces had killed three of its soldiers, one of the worst breeches of a ceasefire in recent months. Azerbaijan said Armenian forces had initiated an attack which it repelled.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state energy company, said that it had issued $750m worth of 15-year Eurobonds. It had earlier said that it would issue debt but didn’t specify how much. SOCAR said the debt issue was linked to the fall in oil prices.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 15 2015 (The Bulletin) – Hundreds of people demonstrated in Baku against the devaluation by 33% of the manat currency last month. The size of the march was contested with its organisers saying 10,000 people attended and police saying there were a few hundred.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 16 2015 (The Bulletin) – Food prices in Azerbaijan rose in February by 6.6%, media reported quoting the state statistics agency. Economists have been warning that Azerbaijan may be facing inflation after a sudden devaluation by 33% of the manat in February.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 17 2015 (The Bulletin) – Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev flew to Kars in Turkey to launch construction of the $10b Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) which will pump gas from the Caspian to Europe. Also present were Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan and Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 17 2015 (The Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s economy will probably grow by 1.5% in 2015 despite a downturn in regional conditions, Reuters quoted EBRD economist Dmitry Gvindadze as saying. He said Azerbaijan’s oil fund, worth $50b, had created a buffer that meant Azerbaijan could weather the economic storm.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 16 2015 (The Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s GDP in January was nearly 17% lower than for the same month in 2015, the Central Bank said in its monthly report on the state of the economy.
In January, Azerbaijan generated receipts worth 3.63b manat ($3.46b) compared to 4.36b manat in January 2014. This means that Azerbaijan is slipping towards a recession.
The Central Bank slashed the value of the manat by 33% last month and most media in Azerbaijan, which is generally pliant and pro-government, spun the drop as a rise in real GDP because of the devaluation.
Many economists disagreed, though. Samir Aliyev, an economist at the Center for Assistance to Economic Initiatives in Baku, said this heavy drop in GDP is more evidence that the combined impact of the drop in global oil prices and also the downturn in Russia’s economy have hit Central Asia and the South Caucasus hard.
“We witnessed such a big drop only in 2008 and 2009 during the global economic crisis, when oil prices slipped down,” he said. “However, to call it a recession we should have numbers for at least three months.”
The trickle-down effect of the collapse in oil prices from the summer of 2014 — prices fell by around 50% — has only just begun to seriously dent Azerbaijan’s economy. January was the first month that GDP dropped.
Data from the Central Bank also showed that Azerbaijan’s non-oil economy — which international economists said needs to grow — increased by 5%.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)