Tag Archives: business

Turkmenistan to import S Korean buses

MAY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan will import South Korea-made passenger buses, in an effort to boost economic cooperation. President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and Kim Wee- Chul, CEO Hyundai Engineering, signed the agreement in Ashgabat. In 2013, Hyundai Engineering had completed construction work at a processing plant near Galkynysh, the largest gas field in the country.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)

Kazakh electricity company eyes up CASA-1000

MAY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — KEGOC, a state-owned electricity distributor in Kazakhstan, said it would be open to exporting electricity to Afghanistan and Pakistan through the CASA-1000 line. The CASA-1000 project is scheduled for completion by 2020.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)

Kyrgyzstan to transfer Chinese factories

MAY 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s foreign minister Yerlan Abdyldayev said he is negotiating the transfer of several Chinese factories to the Central Asian country over the next few years. Mr Abyldayev sees this development as a potential boost for Kyrgyzstan’s industrialisation. Kyrgyzstan’s economy is heavily reliant on remittances from abroad, which have shrunk in the past 18 months due to a recession in Russia.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)

Azerbaijan’s oil company cuts costs

MAY 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company SOCAR said it had closed three of its representative offices abroad, in an attempt to cut costs during a period of sustained low oil prices. Rovnag Abdullayev, SOCAR’s CEO said the company shut offices in Switzerland, Belgium and Germany. Importantly, these are just the representative offices, the offices of SOCAR’s subsidiaries will remain open. SOCAR is one of Azerbaijan’s biggest brands. For it to close offices means that the government is feeling the pinch economically.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)

Azerbaijan’s oil company to build new refinery

MAY 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company, said it will build a new oil refinery in Kulevi, on Georgia’s Black Sea coast, near its existing oil terminal. SOCAR said it has agreed with Georgian authorties to build the plant by the end of 2019. The refinery will cost $120m to build and will have a capacity of 2m tonnes/year.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)

Armenia to receive arms from Russia

MAY 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Hovik Abrahamyan, Armenia’s PM, said Russia had started delivering arms as part of a deal worth $200m. The arms deal was announced a few days after Armenian leader Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev met for the first time since fighting broke out between the two neighbours around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in April.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)

Batumi’s other poorer and dislocated side

BATUMI/Georgia, MAY 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — With its palm tree-lined boulevards, this city on the Black Sea coast is Georgia’s best known tourist destination.

It has boomed over the past decade and will soon host the world’s sixth largest hotel in the form of the 45-storey Twin Tower.

But there is a darker side.

On the outskirts of Batumi, several thousand people live in dilapidated barracks. Since October 2012, migrants and socially deprived people have been living in an abandoned Russian military base, now one of the biggest shantytowns in Georgia.

Its dwellers call it Ocnebis Kalaki. In English, this means Dream Town. It is a joke, a dark joke.

Water is available for only a few hours a day, there are frequent power cuts, gas is not provided and a rudimental sewage system increases the risk of infections and diseases.

Most of the families live in very small, poorly-built rooms. A family of eight share a two-room shack made out of wood, cement-asbestos, metal sheets and cardboard.

These people live on the fringe of Georgian society.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)

Turkmenistan discusses TAPI financing

MAY 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Turkmen government said it has started negotiations with the Islamic Development Bank and other international financial institutions to open credit lines for funding the TAPI gas pipeline, which will pump gas to Pakistan and India through Afghanistan. Among potential backers, Turkmenistan has targeted Saudi Arabia and Japan. The pipeline, which will cost $10b and have a capacity of 33b cubic metres per year, is scheduled for completion in 2019.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)

Kazakh bank’s profits fell by 33%

MAY 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Halyk Bank, Kazakhstan’s second- largest bank, said profits fell by 33% in Q1 2016, compared to 2015 due to a slowdown in lending. The bank said high interest rates at the beginning of the year had scared away consumers. Importantly, Halyk also said the proportion of bad loans in its portfolio increased to 11.7% from 9.1% in Q4 2015.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)

Mega Uzbek gas processing complex starts work

MAY 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Ustyurt Gas Chemical Complex in Uzbekistan, bigger than any other petrochemical complex in Europe and Asia, officially started operating, marking a coming-of-age for the Uzbek-Korean joint venture that has built and will operate the plant.

The plant cost around $4b and took five years to build. Ustyurt will process around 4.5b cubic metres of gas per year. Uz-Kor Gas Chemical, a joint venture between state-owned

Uzbekneftegaz and South Korea’s largest petrochemical company Lotte Chemical, said that it has already received gas for processing.

At a ceremony to celebrate the event, Lotte Chemical, a subsidiary of South Korea’s Lotte Group, said this was a first step in their campaign to expand westwards.

“The completion of the complex will significantly help Lotte Chemical expand its business territories to Russia and North Africa as well Europe and Central Asia,” Lotte said in a statement.

Uzbek and South Korean PMs Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Hwang Kyoahn also attended the ceremony.

Uzbekistan is among the top 15 gas producing countries and considers the Ustyurt gas complex to be vital to its economic plans. It is also planning parallel investments to increase gas production at its ageing fields in Karakalpakstan, west Uzbekistan, where the Ustyurt complex is located.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)