Tag Archives: business

Kazakhstan’s Samruk-Kazyna gets Kashagan loan

OCT. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Samruk-Kazyna, Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund, signed a five-year loan agreement for up to $1.5b to help fund its purchase of a 8.4% stake in the Kashagan oil field. Kazmunaigas, Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company, agreed earlier this year to sell half its 16.81% stake in Kashagan to Samruk–Kazyna. The manoeuvre is considered a mechanism to help Kazmunaigas raise funds during this period of depressed oil prices.

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

TAPI shareholders sign deal in Turkmen capital

OCT. 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — TAPI consortium members signed a deal described by the Asian Development Bank as a milestone shareholders’ agreement at a meeting in Ashgabat, an important step towards turning TAPI from a paper project into a real project. The TAPI project aims to build a pipeline to pump Turkmen gas to India, across Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Stock market: Centerra Gold, KAZ Minerals

OCT. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The US Federal Reserve Bank’s hinted that interest rates could be increased in December, hitting stock markets worldwide. South Caucasus- and Central Asia-related shares were no exception.

Miners were hit badly. Kyrgyzstan- focused Centerra Gold saw its shares lose over 9% in Toronto this week, closing at 7.36 Canadian dollars on Friday.

KAZ Minerals shares were also down 9%, closing at 116p on Friday.

After announcing it would pay a dividend to its shareholders on Oct. 30, Central Asia Metals reversed a slow start and closed on Friday, with a marginal positive growth, at 163p/share in London.

Oil and gas producers also suffered, despite oil prices gaining 2% this week with Brent crude closing at $49.5/barrel. Kazakhstan-focused Tethys Petroleum and Nostrum Oil & Gas both lost around 10% this week.

After reaching an 8-month high at £21.35/share last Friday, London-listed Bank of Georgia fell by 6.5% to £20.00. Last week its shares rallied after a healthcare group it holds a large stake in announced an IPO price range that valued the company at around $500m.

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan move up ‘Doing Business’ survey

ALMATY, OCT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Central Asian countries fared strikingly well in the latest Doing Business report published by the World Bank, possibly reflecting a drive to attract investment to fight off worsening economic conditions across the region.

The World Bank report singled out Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as among the ten most improved countries in the world. Georgia fell from 15th to 24th place but its overall score was deemed an improvement over last year’s. All other countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus improved their ranking.

According to the World Bank’s assessments. Kazakhstan, 41st in the rankings, made registering a property transfer faster and easier, and Uzbekistan made it easier to start a new business and access credit. It was ranked at 87th, up 54 positions from last year.

In an interview with the Bulletin, Valentina Saltane, Private Sector Development Specialist at the World Bank said Kazakhstan had reformed seven key areas.

“The only area that needs real improvement is cross-border trade,” she said. “Uzbekistan adopted three major reforms, one of which , starting a business, dates back to 2013, but became accessible to private businesses only at the end of 2014.”

Other analysts also said that Kazakhstan had been working hard to speed up various technical reforms.

Alex Nice, Eastern Europe editor at the EIU, said: “Kazakhstan has announced a range of technical reforms, to try to improve the investment climate, in response to the economic slowdown. So it’s not surprising it has moved up the rankings.”

But Mr Nice also sounded a note of caution. He said that developing countries, Kazakhstan included, hire consultants just to advise them on how to move up the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ survey.

“Kazakhstan invests a lot in promoting its image abroad, and may well have hired consultants to advise it on how to achieve a move up the rankings,” Mr Nice continued. “That doesn’t mean that the challenges to doing business in Kazakhstan have fundamentally changed.”

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Georgia’s energy minister meets Gazprom CEO

OCT. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s energy minister Kakha Kaladze met with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller in Milan, their second meeting in a month to discuss Georgian gas supplies from Russia. Georgia needs to increase gas imports to meet demand but buying gas from Russia, they fought a war in 2008, has irritated many people.

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Georgia plans to boost foreign investment

OCT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili chaired the first session of Georgia’s Investors’ Council, a body that aims to bring local businesses and major international financial institutions together. Mr Garibashvili set up the Council in May. Foreign investment plays a significant role in Georgia’s economy. The government wants to stimulate the economy by giving potential investors a boost.

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Kyrgyzstan to sell paper plant

OCT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kyrgyz government said it wants to sell a bankrupt paper mill for 300m soms ($4.3m), a fraction of its original value. The plant, built in the early 2000s through a Kyrgyz-Chinese joint venture, cost around 151m yuan, ($24m) to build. It operated for only two years, before being mothballed. Paper prices have collapsed over the past few years, forcing paper mills around the world out of business.

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Tele2 profits in Kazakhstan increase by 34%

OCT. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swedish mobile operator Tele2 posted a 34% increase in revenues at its Kazakh subsidiary in Q3 2015, compared to the same period last year. The increase was partly due to the fall in the value of the tenge. Earlier in September, Pietari Kivikko, chairman of Tele2’s Kazakh subsidiary, had predicted a fall in revenues for all telecoms companies in Kazakhstan.

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Armenia to subsidize electricity

OCT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s government and Tahir Group, which bought the country’s electricity networks last month, said that they will subsidise electricity prices until the end of July 2016. Earlier this year thousands of Armenians protested against proposed electricity price rises.

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Uzbekistan raises coal imports

OCT. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek government has ordered more coal imports to match growing demand, media said. According to the website fergananews.com Uzbekistan will import around 330,000 tonnes of coal this winter. Regionally, Uzbekistan is a major gas producer, but it prefers to export most of the gas to earn foreign currency.

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)