Tag Archives: Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan and Georgia pledge closer economic ties

OCT. 27/28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Under orders from Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to seek out more economic opportunities, economic development minister, Shahin Mustafayev, travelled to Tbilisi to meet his counterparts and mull over various deals.

The meeting is important because it shows how Azerbaijan is looking to boost economic links with its immediate neighbours to help it through an economic downturn. As well as increasing trade with Georgia, Azerbaijan has reached out to Iran and Russia.

Official data showed that last year Azerbaijan invested a record $500m into Georgia’s economy. SOCAR, its state-owned energy company, is one of the most highly visible brands in Georgia with 120 fuel filling stations. Pipeline politics have also brought the two neighbours closer. Georgia is a host country for various oil and gas pipelines running from Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea coast to Turkey and Europe.

And after their meeting in Tbilisi, Georgian officials said that they expected trade between the two countries to increase further.

“Businessmen of Azerbaijan and Georgia will soon start joint business projects to move forward the economy of the two countries,” media quoted Maya Mikeladze, a Georgian Presidential adviser, as saying.

Analysts were more cautious, though. Natig Jafarli, an Azerbaijani economist and opposition activist, said that in current economic conditions a boost in business deals was unlikely. Georgia was still important to Azerbaijan, though.

“Georgia is a window to Europe for Azerbaijan and a major transit corridor,” he said. “Baku will continue to play a vital role in the economy of Georgia.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Netanyahu visits Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan

OCT. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan over the next three months, the Israeli government said. Mr Netanyahu has visited Azerbaijan previously during a term as PM in 1997. No Israeli PM has ever visited Kazakhstan. Both Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are Israel’s biggest oil suppliers.

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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Azerbaijan exports oil to Belarus

NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan sent 84,700 tonnes of oil to Belarus, the country’s first commercial energy exports to Belarus since short-lived swaps in 2010/11. Belneftekhim, the Belarusian buyer, will use Azerbaijani crude at its Mozyr refinery. Belarus is actively seeking alternative suppliers of oil as Russian shipments have failed to meet domestic demand. Azerbaijan’s oil was sent through Georgia’s Supsa port to Odessa in Ukraine and then on to Belarus.

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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Anglo-Asian improves efficiency in Azerbaijan

NOV. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan-focused Anglo Asian Mining said it had improved cost- efficiency at its gold mining operations in Gedabek, a gold, copper and silver mine in the west of the country. The company has cut per-ounce expenditure to $703 in H1 2016 from $925 in H1 2015.

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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Azerbaijan’s reserves fall, again

NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s foreign reserves fell by 3.1% in October to $4b, the Central Bank said in a statement. At the end of 2015, foreign currency holdings amounted to $5b. This year alone, Azerbaijan used up 20% of its reserves. Over the past two years, sustained low oil prices forced the government to intervene in the currency market and prop up the economy. In 2015, reserves shrank by 60%.

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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz governments sponsor films to promote themselves

OCT. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Governments of the South Caucasus and Central Asia are sponsoring films to promote their various causes.

This season’s new releases includes a big screen version of Nino and Ali, the classic story of a romance between a Muslim Azerbaijani man and a Christian Georgian woman, which premiered in Baku this month.

It was sponsored by the state linked Heydar Aliyev centre. Leyla Aliyeva, daughter of president Ilham Aliyev, is listed in the credits as an executive producer.

The killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in eastern Turkey during the end of the Ottoman Empire, described as a genocide by

Armenia but denied by Turkey, has also been turned into a Hollywood film starring Christian Bale called The Promise. The reviews, so far, have been mixed.

In previous years Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Georgia have all directly or indirectly sponsored films to promote their causes too.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

EITI tells Azerbaijan that civil society must be improved

ALMATY, OCT. 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global lobby group which effectively acts as an ethical watchdog for countries with economies that rely heavily on mining, oil and gas, said it will expel Azerbaijan from the organisation if it fails to reform its NGO laws within four months.

The Oslo-based EITI is influential because Western investment is often linked to compliance with its various rules. If Azerbaijan was kicked out of the group, it would threaten vital foreign investment deals.

Last year, the EITI downgraded Azerbaijan’s membership because of what it said was a crackdown on civil society.

At a meeting in Kazakhstan, the EITI said that Azerbaijan had improved some aspects of its economy and society, in line with recommendations drawn up last year during a so-called Validation process, but that more needed to be done to retain its membership.

“Azerbaijan has made important progress in opening up the oil sector and I am encouraged to hear about the recent plans for government reforms towards more transparency,” Fredrik Reinfeldt, chair of the EITI, said in a statement.

“I hope that the government will continue its recent efforts to ensure that civil society can play its proper role in this process, otherwise this progress risks being overshadowed.”

If Azerbaijan fails to keep its EITI membership, investment for its Southern Gas Corridor, a pipeline network that will pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, will be at risk.

Specifically, in September the EBRD said it would reconsider a $1.5b loan for the TANAP pipeline, part of the Southern Gas Corridor that Azerbaijan is building to pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, if Azerbaijan was kicked out of the EITI.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Azerbaijani miner jumps

OCT. 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rallying on last week’s new discovery, Anglo Asian’s stock price nearly doubled, closing at 29p, a three-year high. On Oct. 17, the Azerbaijani miner said it discovered a new gold deposit 3km north of its main deposit at Gadabek. The company will further evaluate the deposit next year, when it plans to bring it to commercial production.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Azerbaijan jails for 10 years activist who graffitied Heydar Aliyev statue

OCT. 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Baku sentenced a 22-year- old activist to 10 years in jail after he sprayed anti-government slogans on a statue of former president, Heydar Aliyev.

Giyas Ibrahimov was arrested with fellow activist Bayram Mammadov in May 2016, hours after a photo of the graffiti was posted on Facebook. Both were later charged with drug possession although the men said that these were bogus and were politically motivated.

Opposition groups have said that the authorities wanted a particularly heavy sentence against Ibrahimov because of the sensitivity of defacing a state of Heydar Aliye, father of current president Ilham Aliyev.

Before he was led away at the end of his trial, Ibrahimov was defiant “We didn’t violate any law, we violated the rules of a corrupt system,” he said.

Mr Mammadov, who was arrested with Ibrahimov, is still waiting for his case to be heard.

Erkin Gadirli, academic and member of the opposition REAL movement told The Conway Bulletin that President Aliyev would have taken the defacing of the statue personally.

“The punishment was so severe in order to teach a lesson to other activists,” he said.

The court’s verdict was also rare because the judge handed out a longer jail sentence than the prosecution had asked for. The prosecutor had asked for nine years but Ibrahimov was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Just hours after the verdict was passed, slogans of solidarity and support for the jailed activist started appearing on Baku’s streets. Importantly for the authorities, though, none of the many symbols and statues of Heydar Aliyev were defaced.

Others, though, thought the sentence was justified.

“I am against random street graffiti. As far as I know Giyas has been arrested on a drug charge,” Seda Huseyn wrote on a blog. “Anyway, what’s the point of slogan-scribbling? It works for the interests of human rights defenders. They use Giyas for their filthy ambitions like receiving grants from abroad.”

Europe and the US have criticised Azerbaijan during the past few years over its treatment of opposition activists. It’s likely that Ibrahimov’s case will generate more criticism of the Azerbaijani authorities

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

China’s Huawei to roll out 4G in Azerbaijan

OCT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Chinese telecoms giant Huawei said it will roll out a 4G service in Azerbaijan’s exclave region of Nakhchivan, highlighting China’s growing business influence in the South Caucasus.

Separated from mainland Azerbaijan by a sliver of Armenian territory, Nakhchivan also borders Turkey and Iran.

The region, which spans 5,500 square km, roughly as big as Brunei, holds symbolic significance as the birthplace of Heydar Aliyev, first president of independent Azerbaijan and father of current leader Ilham Aliyev.

The animosity between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh region means that Nakhchivan has, effectively, been cut off from the rest of Azerbaijan. To power the region, Azerbaijan and Iran swap gas supplies.

This makes the deal with Huawei, and China’s influence, important for Nakhchivan.

“Now people living in most distant villages of Nakhchivan can enjoy a high-speed internet,” China’s Global Post quoted Vasif Talibov, speaker of Nakhchivan’s autonomous parliament, as saying.

No details of the cost of the deal, or whether Azerbaijan was paying for any of the 4G roll-out, were released.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)