MARCH 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Baku-based freight carrier Silk Road West has ordered three Boeing 747-8 cargo planes for a reported $1.1b, Boeing said in a statement. The deal is a major one for Boeing and shows Silk Road West’s confidence.
-ENDS-
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
FEB. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan is paying Britain to send a team of 160 athletes to compete at the inaugural European Games in Baku this year, the Guardian newspaper reported. In an interview, the British team manager, Mark England, said Azerbaijan was giving “participation grants”. Azerbaijan’s Olympic Committee said it was paying travel and other costs for all 50 teams to compete.
-ENDS-
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
MARCH 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Union has identified Central Asia and the South Caucasus as a future source of energy that will, importantly, reduce its reliance on Russia.
In an interview with the FT, Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission’s vice-president for energy affairs, said that the region could become a major supplier of gas to the EU.
In particular, the EU is looking to Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. It has diligently invested time and money building up relations and pipeline infrastructure over the past few years in the region.
Now, as relations with Russia sour over the Kremlin’s support for separatists in Ukraine, the EU is speeding up its search for alternative sources of energy.
And in Central Asia and the South Caucasus it will find a willing partner. The fallout over the drop in Russia’s economy and the collapse in energy prices have been severe and governments are looking for alternative markets. Europe may be bureaucratic but it is stable and reliable.
Turkmenistan’s government was quick to respond positively to the EU’s smoke signals.
It’s a different scenario in countries which don’t produce energy.
Armenia is reliant on Russia’s Gazprom for its energy. It has had to ask for a gas price discount, pulling it more and more under the influence of the Kremlin.
-ENDS-
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
MARCH 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia accused Azerbaijan of shooting dead two of its soldiers around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. There was no immediate Azerbaijani reaction to the accusation but it does appear to be an escalation. A 1994 cease-fire keeps a fragile peace around Nagorno-Karabakh.
-ENDS-
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
MARCH 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s deputy PM, Ulugbek Rozukulov, met with the Azerbaijani economy minister, Shahin Mustafayev to discuss increased cooperation and specifically whether Azerbaijan will be able to buy cars that had been built for the Russia market before the collapse of the rouble and the economic crisis.
-ENDS-
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
FEB. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s ministry of labour has drafted a programme designed to encourage more people to have baby daughters.
One of the potential incentives — and this has not been made law yet — is to pay 10,000 manat ($9,500) to families who have a second daughter, NGO leaders who participated in the state program discussions told media.
In 2014, Azerbaijani statistics said that 46.4% of new-borns were girls. Some experts have said that women are under pressure to have an abortion if they are due to give birth to a second girl. Similarly to other countries in the region, boys are generally preferred in Azerbaijan.
A 35-year-old woman from Yevlakh in western Azerbaijan said she was pressured by her husband to abort a baby when they were told it was a girl.
“He is a nice man but I could understand him. We already had two girls at home, he wanted a boy,” she said. “Eventually we kept it because we found out that we were actually going to have twins. A girl and a boy. When the doctor told me this, I could not help crying out loudly.”
The woman, who preferred to remain anonymous, said her husband would not have considered an abortion if there was a cash incentive to keep a third daughter.
Some members of Azerbaijan’s civil society, though, sounded a note of caution.
Hadi Rajabli, head of parliament’s Social Policy Commission said that if cash was handed out to families with more than one daughter, poorer families would prefer girls over boys creating more problems.
“There should be some other ways of doing this,” he said in an interview with local media.
-ENDS-
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
FEB. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Bank cut the value of its manat currency overnight by a third in response to the falling value of the Russian rouble and the collapse in oil prices.
Many analysts said that a devaluation was long overdue although none expected such a sharp correction.
And, as a Bulletin correspondent reports from Azerbaijan, the devaluation has angered and frustrated local people. Ordinary people have watched as the value of their savings has plummeted, inflation has soared and economic growth rates have been cut.
This is the major risk that the Central Asian and South Caucasus economies run when trying to deal with an increasingly nasty economic downturn that has enveloped the region. They need to adjust their monetary policies while still retaining the trust of their populations.
Part of the problem has been the speed with which the economic downturn has hit the region.
Most Central Banks in Central Asia and the South Caucasus have allowed their currencies to depreciate slowly although Turkmenistan, and now Azerbaijan, have opted for a sudden devaluation this year.
Kazakhstan is still resisting another correction — it cut the value of its tenge currency by 20% last year — but it must now only be a matter of time before it succumbs.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015
FEB. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Bank slashed the value of its manat currency by a third overnight, a sudden move that took businesses and ordinary Azerbaijanis by surprise.
Previously Azerbaijani officials had said that they would release the manat from its dollar peg, suggesting only a gradual devaluation to adjust to a sharp decline in the Russian rouble.
They have now justified the sudden devaluation by saying that they had little choice but to act in the face of a collapse in oil prices and economic turbulence in Russia.
“This decision was made in order to support diversification of Azerbaijan’s economy, strengthen its international compatibility and export potential as well as to provide balance of payments sustainability,” the Central Bank said in a statement.
On the streets of Azerbaijan’s towns, though, the devaluation was less generously viewed.
Veli, 29, a small business owner in Guba, a northern city, told a Bulletin correspondent that he was in shock.
“I believed the government. I kept my savings in the manat,” he said. “I lost third of my savings. It’s painful. It’s theft by the government.”
He said that he had no choice but to increase the price of the electronic goods he was selling in his shop — fuelling rising inflation.
Sahiba, a mother of two young children living in the city of Gazakh on the western border with Georgia echoed these sentiments. Her husband is a government official but has had his pay cut already this year.
“We’ve got a mortgage,” she said. “I don’t know what we’ll do.”
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
FEB. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Baku ordered the pre-trial detention of human rights activist Arif Yunus to be extended by five months, local media reported. Mr Yunus is the husband of Leyla Yunus who has also been arrested on accusations of treason. Both have denied the charges and said that they are politically motivated.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
FEB. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The EU’s special envoy for human rights, Stavros Lambrinidis, flew to Azerbaijan for a visit that is expected to culminate in a critical evaluation of the Azerbaijani government. Human rights groups urged Mr Stavros to use his trip to pressure the authorities into releasing various prisoners.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)