NOV. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Nar Mobile brand of Azerbaijan’s telecoms company Azerfon said it has expanded 3G and 4G coverage in the country. Kent McNeley, Azerfon’s CEO, said the company has doubled its total network capacity in the past two years. Nar Mobile was awarded a licence to operate LTE networks earlier in February.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — KMG International, a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company Kazmunaigas, will invest $6m in the modernisation of the Petromidia Navodari refinery in Romania. KMG International owns Rompetrol. The Petromidia refinery has a capacity of 5m tonnes/year and is located just north of Constanta, Romania’s main Black Sea port. The upgrade will be completed by 2018.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkcell, Turkey’s biggest mobile service provider, is planning on buying TeliaSonera’s assets in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, Bloomberg News reported by quoting a source close to the company.
The source said that Turkcell had appointed HSBC and Citigroup to advise it on its potential bid to buy the stake in Fintur from TeliaSonera that it doesn’t already own.
Turkcell owns 41.45% of Rotterdam-based Fintur; TeliaSonera owns the rest. Fintur runs brands in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Moldova with 18m users.
Turkcell CEO, Kaan Terzioglu, appeared to confirm the company’s intention to buy TeliaSonera’s stake in Fintur. Answering journalists’ questions in Istanbul on when a deal would be finished, he said: “in 2016 if all the negotiations go well.”
The deal is important because it moves TeliaSonera towards its stated aim of selling its companies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. It also owns businesses in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan which it wants to find a buyer for.
Earlier this year, it said that it wanted to sell up after investigations began into a corruption scandal at its Uzbek company. It is alleged to have paid Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, millions of dollars in bribes to gain access to the Uzbek mobile market in 2007/8.
Telenor, its Norwegian rival, is also investigating alleged corruption at its Uzbek subsidiary. It owns a 33% stake in Russia-based Vimpelcom which owns a company in Uzbekistan that also, allegedly paid a bribe to enter the market.
Turkcell is Turkey’s main mobile operator. Its shareholder structure has been argued over since 2011. It has shares listed on the New York and Istanbul stock exchanges but its institutional shareholders include Turkey’s Cukurova Holding, Russia’s AlfaGroup and TeliaSonera.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif met with Uzbek president Islam Karimov in Tashkent where the leaders signed deals that should deepen bilateral relations .
The trip was significant for Pakistan because it is looking to boost ties with Central Asia and important for Uzbekistan which needs allies to sell cotton to.
Cold-shouldered by the West, which avoids buying Uzbek cotton because of allegations it is picked using child labour, Uzbekistan has boosted relations with Pakistan as it buys Uzbek cotton for its garments industry.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Officials from Iran and Armenia have signed deals which will improve cross-border trade insurance claims and investigations, media reported. The deal underlines the advanced relations between Armenia and Iran. The neighbours need each other to boost trade.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swedish mobile provider TeliaSonera appointed the former head ofTcell, Tajikistan’s biggest mobile network provider, Mansur Khamidov to be a vice-president in charge of the Eurasia region. TeliaSonera is currently restructuring its operations and has said that it wants to sell its Eurasia companies, partly because of corruption allegations alleged against its Uzbek subsidiary. As well as Tajikistan, TeliaSonera owns mobile operations in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Cyprus-registered New Science Technologies, which sells satellite crop monitoring equipment, said that demand for its products is growing in Kazakhstan and that it has had to build new capacity. Kazakhstan has increased its grain harvest considerably over the past few years. Kazakhstan’s wheat fields are vast and need satellite technology to monitor.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Halyk Bank, one of Kazakhstan’s largest retail banks, reported increased net income in the third quarter of 2015 of 36b tenge, roughly a third larger than the third quarter of 2014. In US dollar terms, taking into account the devaluation of the tenge, Q3 2015 and Q3 2014 are roughly the same. Operating expenses grew by 12.7% in the first 9 months of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014 because of wage inflation linked to the devaluation of the tenge.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan Airlines is still considering which small aircraft to buy to service domestic routes, the company said when it filed its Q3 results. Earlier this year, Turkmenistan said that it wanted to expand its domestic air service.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Despite pledging to maintain oil and gas production this year, both have fallen in Azerbaijan. Oil production, vital for the economy, fell 2% to 35m tonnes in the first 10 months of the year, a government source told Reuters, and the national statistics office said gas production dropped 2.7% in same period.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)