Tag Archives: business

Cement plant expands in Uzbekistan

JULY 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkish company DAL Teknik Makina completed the expansion of one of the largest Uzbek cement complexes, the ministry of economy said in a statement. State- owned Almalyk Mining-Metallurgical Complex commissioned the expansion of the cement plant in the Jizzakh region near Samarkand, southern Uzbekistan, for $35.8m. The plant should now increase production of cement to 650,000 tonnes in 2016 and to around 1m tonnes thereafter. Last year, China’s Shanfang Cement pledged a $130m investment to build a new cement plant in Uzbekistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Azerbaijan to link energy system with Russia

JULY 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s energy minister Natig Aliyev said that his country is ready to link its energy system with Russia and Iran and create a north-south energy corridor. Once complete, the corridor would allow Iran to import around 700 megawatt of electricity per year. Iran currently imports electricity from Armenia. At the end of June, Iran and Azerbaijan completed a cross-border power transmission line.

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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

China to build piplene between Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

JULY 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — China will go ahead with the construction of a fourth line of the Central Asia-China gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, officials said. Luo Wei Dong, a deputy at China’s ministry of commerce told the Kremlin- funded Sputnik news agency that the pipeline will be built in the near future and will increase the overall capacity by 54% to 85b cubic metres/year.

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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Georgia looks to boost wine sales to China

TBILISI, JULY 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s wine marketing chiefs are looking to reduce their export over-dependence on Russia and boost sales to China.

Having cemented its status and influence in Central Asia over the past decade, China has pushed harder for a stronger foothold in the South Caucasus. In the last few years it has opened up cultural centres, sent senior officials on trade and diplomatic visits and given out soft loans.

Now China also appears to be sponsoring an education and advertising drive to encourage consumers to buy products from the region, including that most iconic of Georgian products — wine.

In an interview with The Conway Bulletin, Irakli Cholobargia, the head of marketing at the Georgian National Wine Agency, said that China had built shops dedicated to selling Georgian wine.

“Wine consumption in China is growing and Georgian wine is an extremely attractive product on Chinese market because of its ancient origins and old traditions,” he said.

“There are businessmen who started to open big wine houses wholly dedicated to Georgian wines. This is a completely different approach to the wine business. Nowhere else is there this kind of approach.”

And the figures back up this trend. China has now become Georgia’s third biggest export market after a 148% increase in sales during the first half of the year.

Georgia is likely to sign a free trade agreement with China later this year, again boosting trade between the two countries.

All this, Mr Cholobargia said, was helping his strategy of reducing the Georgian wine industry’s reliance on Russia. Russia stopped a number of products being imported from Georgia in 2006, including wine, when relations between the two countries fell apart, leading to a brief war in 2008. In 2013, the trade embargo was relaxed.

“The Russian market is not a stable market. Before the embargo in 2006, 80% of our export went to Russia,” Mr Cholobargia. “When it opened up in 2013, we had 65% of total export to Russia. Now it is about 50%. Our goal is to keep shrinking this, and maybe get to the 30%.”

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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Car sales fell in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s customs agency said that the country imported around 1,300 cars in H1 2016, a drop of 80% compared to the same period last year. Earlier reports said that car imports in Kyrgyzstan have also dropped in H1 2016. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are two of the most remittance-dependent countries in the world and their economies have been hit hard by a recession in Russia.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Tajikistan’s aluminum smelter increases production

JULY 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s state-owned aluminium smelter TALCO said it produced 73,100 tonnes of aluminium in H1 2016, a 13% increase over the same period last year. Low commodity prices, though, meant it sold aluminium at a price range of $1,400-$1,600/tonne. Production costs have reached $2,000/tonne.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Azerbaijan’s energy company restarts its platform

JULY 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR said that it had resumed operations at an oil platform badly damaged by a storm and a fire in December. SOCAR said that work at one of the 28 oil wells operated by Platform No. 10 in the shallow-water Guneshli field had restarted. 31 oil workers died in the storm on Dec. 11, the worst offshore accident at an oil platform for nearly 30 years.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Kyrgyz reputation drop deters Chinese

BISHKEK, JULY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to woo investors from China and to boost stagnant domestic industries, Kyrgyzstan made a direct plea last month to Chinese businesses to buy into 43 different factories.

The problem is that, seven weeks on, none seem particularly interested. In an interview with The Conway Bulletin, Alkhanbek Imanaliyev, the CEO of Bishkek-based knit-wear company Ilbirs, blamed a fall in Kyrgyzstan’s image as a place to do business for the lack of interest. He hasn’t had a single visit from a Chinese company looking to invest in Kyrgyzstan.

“We welcome any investors as long as they don’t change the profile of the factory and retain local people as employees,” he said. “But raids and scandals around the Kumtor gold mining company intimidate them.”

Chinese investment has become a mainstay of business and infrastructure projects in Central Asia. China has openly looked to curry political favour through its investments.

But it hasn’t all been smooth.

Chinese companies generally prefer to import labour from China, raising tension with local workers. This has lead to fights, especially in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Over the past couple of years, groups of Kyrgyz locals have even raided foreign-owned business on horseback to settle disputes and to intimidate. This year, also, the Kyrgyz tax authorities raided a refinery owned by a Chinese company arrested the Chinese deputy director.

On the Kumtor Gold mine, the Kyrgyz government is locked in a protracted row with Toronto-listed Centerra Gold over its ownership.

All this appears to have undermined Chinese investors’ confidence, a major problem for Kyrgyzstan which is looking to boost investment.

Not everybody in Kyrgyzstan, though, was even happy about the initial offer made to Chinese investors. At the Soviet-era lamp factory in Maily-Suu, in west Kyrgyzstan, workers worry they could lose their jobs if the company is taken over.

“This factory ensures jobs for 2,700 people, which is roughly 12% of Maily-Suu town population,” Avazkan Arzykulova, head of the labour union at the factory, told The Bulletin. She has written to the Kyrgyz government asking them to block any sale to a Chinese company.

For now, though, it doesn’t appear as if Ms Arzykulova and her colleagues don’t have anything to worry about.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Oilfield in Kazakhstan issues bond

JULY 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tengizchevroil (TCO), the Chevron- led consortium exploiting the Tengiz oilfield in western Kazakhstan, issued a $1b 10-year Eurobond with a 4% coupon, lower than previously forecast, RIA Novosti said. Earlier in July, TCO approved a $37b expansion plan, which will boost production at Tengiz by 45% by 2020.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Car sales drop in Kazakhstan

JULY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s car production shrank by 62.2% to 2,980 units in H1 2016, compared to the same period last year, according to the Statistics Committee. This fall in car sales is an important indicator of the health of the economy and people’s expectations as to where it is heading.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)