NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakhstan/Russia-led Eurasian Development Bank sent a 7.7b tenge ($23m) loan to KazTransGas- Aimak, the largest gas distributor in Kazakhstan, to upgrade the network in the northern Aktobe region. One of the key objectives of the overhaul is to expand the network to isolated villages that are cut off from the grid.
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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
TBILISI, NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — US-based hotel chain Hilton will finally open a new $31m four-star hotel in Tbilisi next year, its first in the Georgian capital, adding much-needed extra bedrooms in Georgia where both tourist and business visits are rising steadily.
The 14-storey Hilton Garden Inn hotel, which will open a few months behind schedule, will hold 165 rooms and be situated towards the western end of Tbilisi, an area which has become a hub for Georgia’s professional businesses and for many Western companies working in the country.
Hilton, which already owns a hotel in Georgia’s Black Sea coast of Batumi and in Baku and Yerevan, had announced in 2013 that it was to build the hotel which it had aimed to open by the end of 2016.
And the Hilton hotel is just the latest to be built in Tbilisi, which has been notoriously short of bedrooms for years but is experiencing something of a hotel building boom.
The National Agency for State Property this week also sold an ornate 100-year-old post office building in the centre of Tbilisi to Nevada, a local real estate company, for 5.7m lari ($2.4m). Nevada plans to convert the building into a 30-bedroom boutique hotel within 3-1/2 years.
Tourism in Georgia is on the rise. Georgia is positioning itself as an affordable summer and winter destination for people living in the former Soviet Union, and you are now as likely to see upwardly mobile young Kazakhs in Batumi as you are in any resort around the Black Sea. Improved ties with Russia have also triggered a rise in visitor numbers, as has relative stability in Iran and Iraq. Revenues from tourism grew to $2b last year, an 8.3% increase compared to 2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
NOV. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — On a mild slide since mid-August, Roxi Petroleum’s stock price received a bump after the company published encouraging results for its new oil wells on Oct. 28.
The London-based company, which operates the BNG Contract Area in western Kazakhstan near Tengiz, said it has almost completed the initial drilling operations at its new Deep Well 6.
The news, technical in nature, was accompanied by a high volume of trading on the stock market, sending Roxi to 10.5p, a 9% jump on the day of the announcement.
The company now needs to assess the commercial feasibility of the field at different depths. Clive Carver, the company’s chairman, said that the preliminary results at Deep Well 6 were even more encouraging than Roxi’s previously drilled deep wells.
A trio of high-ranking Kazakhs owns Roxi.
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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s flagship carrier Air Astana said it plans to buy 13 new aircrafts due to growing demand. Air Astana will make an offer to buy 11 Airbus and two Boeing planes over the next four years. British BAE Systems owns 49% of Air Astana, while Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna owns the rest.
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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
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)
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)
OCT. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakhstan/Russia-led Eurasian Development Bank sent a 4b tenge ($12m) loan to Transtelecom, Kazakhstan’s telecoms network, to improve infrastructure ahead of the upcoming EXPO2017 event in Astana. Earlier in October, Nurali Aliyev, grandson of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, said he had bought 49% of Transtelecom in 2015. State-owned railway company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy owns a 51% stake in Transtelecom.
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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia needs to attract high-value added investment to sustain its growth, Arsen Nazaryan an officer at the World Bank’s IFC local office said in an interview. Of crucial importance, foreign investment that can upgrade the domestic economy and increase high-skilled jobs can only be obtained if the country undergoes more reforms, Mr Nazaryan told the banks.am website. A section of its economy that Armena has developed is tech.
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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
OCT. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s state-owned electricity distributor KEGOC said it paid a dividend of almost 25 tenge (7 cent) per share, amounting to 40% of the net profit for the first half of 2016. The dividend is almost three times as large as the one distributed last year. At a shareholder’s meeting, KEGOC also decided to expand its board of directors to eight, appointing two new local managers.
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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)
NOV. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s energy minister Kanat Bozumbayev said that the government will not consider proposals to build any new power plants for the next seven years because the country’s energy balance is stable. The issue of building a nuclear or coal-fired power plant has been on and off for years in Kazakhstan. It appears that an economic downturn, which has drained the government’s reserves, has finally snuffed out these plans altogether.
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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)