NOV. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to boost the country’s population, Azerbaijani lawmakers are considering state-sponsored fertility treatment, media reported. According to one media outlet, under the proposed scheme women may become eligible for state-sponsored fertility treatment after a year of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
NOV. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Officials from NATO, the US-led Western military alliance, will open a training centre in Baku when they visit the Azerbaijani capital on Nov. 18, media reported. Azerbaijan has deployed a small detachment of soldiers to support NATO’s campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Moving closer to NATO is a snub to Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
NOV. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Assets under the management of the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) have risen by $1.7b to $35.8b this year, media reported. SOFAZ is Azerbaijan’s sovereign wealth fund. It has been on an overseas spending spree over the past couple of years. Around 65% of its assets are in Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
NOV. 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — If proof was needed that a cease-fire between Azerbaijan and Armenia around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh was increasingly fragile, Russia may have given it.
Colonel Andrei Ruzinsky, commander of the Russian forces based in Armenia, said that Russia’s military would back Armenia if Azerbaijan ever tried to take back control of the province.
His intervention was interesting and, perhaps, well timed. Over the past few weeks there have been a number of small fire-fights between the two sides, more, it appears, than normal.
A shaky 1994 cease-fire keeps Armenia and Azerbaijan apart around Nagorno-Karabakh. The region is controlled by Armenian-backed rebels but Azerbaijan has said it wants to reclaim the region.
And it has built up the military firepower to do this.
Armenia’s military is far smaller than Azerbaijan’s but it has the backing of Russia.
While Azerbaijan has steered towards Europe and the West, Armenia has looked to Russia for support. It is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation and pledged to enter the Customs Union. Russia is the main driver and backer of both groups.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
NOV. 4 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A judge in Azerbaijan set the start of the trial of opposition leader Ilgar Mammadov for inciting anti-government violence in January for Nov. 28. Human rights groups have described the trial of Mr Mammadov and others as politically motivated.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
NOV. 4 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Figures from Azerbaijan Railway’s showed how dependent the network is on cash earned from freight transport. Azerbaijan Railways earned 168.5m manat ($215m) in the first nine months of 2013, media quoted the company’s chairman, Arif Asgarov, as saying. Freight transport generated just over 93% of the total.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
NOV. 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan has threaten to withdraw its delegation to Euronest, part of the European parliament designed to foster closer relations with the EU’s neighbours, over a row on election monitors, media reported. Election monitors from Europe said a presidential election in October was not free and fair.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
OCT. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan may ditch pegging its manat currency to the US dollar in the medium term and move to a free float, Khagani Abdullayev, deputy head of Azerbaijan’s Central Bank said in an interview with the Conway Bulletin.
The Azerbaijani manat has been pegged to the US dollar since March 2009. The Central Bank hitched it to the US dollar to secure it during the financial crisis. Now, though, the scenario has changed and Azerbaijan’s economy is starting to grow quickly again, putting the currency under pressure.
“In the near future the plan is the continuation of the peg while a managed float is planned for the mid-term,” Mr Abdullayev said after giving a lecture in Washington DC.
On the economy, he also said cash still made up roughly half the transactions in Azerbaijan.
“The Central Bank will continue to increase its efficiency as Azerbaijan transitions to a more cashless society. Currently 50% of M3 is made up of cash,” Mr Abdullayev said. M3 is a technical reference to money supply.”
Islamic Banking has become increasingly prevalent in Asia and Mr Abdullayev said that although Azerbaijan wouldn’t actively promote this brand of finance, it would play a role in the future.
“The development of Islamic finance in Azerbaijan is a long term objective,” he said.
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 24 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s representative in EuroNest, a European Parliament group set up to promote integration between the EU and some neighbours, accused European vote monitoring bodies of trying to whip up dissent. European vote monitors gave a less-than flattering assessment of Azerbaijan’s presidential election on Oct. 9.
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The main opposition coalition in Azerbaijan, the National Council of Democratic Forces (NCDF), is beginning to break up, underlining the fractured nature of President Ilham Aliyev’s opponents. Media reported that Lala Shevket, head of the liberal party, and her supporters stormed out of an NCDF meeting after a row.
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)