SEPT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Czech Airlines said it will fly between Prague and Yerevan from Dec. 13 to Jan. 16. Jan Toth, the company’s director of marketing said the airline wanted to cover the busy Christmas and New Year period.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Lithuanian Railways will open a representative office in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana, the company said in a statement. “Kazakhstan is Lithuania’s major railway partner in Central Asia. Stasys Dailydka, a director at Lithuanian Railways, said trade volumes, mainly minerals, had been increasing rapidly over the past six years.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Abat Nurseitov resigned as general director of KMG EP, the London-listed unit of Kazakhstan’s state oil and gas company. Mr Nurseitov had been general director since January 2013. Dastan Abdulgafarov, the CFO, was appointed interim CEO.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian energy company Lukoil said it is negotiating with Korea Eximbank, South Korea’s state export credit agency, on funding for its projects in Uzbekistan. Lukoil is building a $2.66b gas processing plant in Kandym, 100km south-west of Bukhara, with South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering and is developing several projects along the Turkmen-Uzbek border.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government said a new tax on the extraction of groundwater is justified despite complaints from soft drinks producers, as companies have previously underpaid for water. “It is important to note that we have a serious shortage of drinking water in Kazakhstan,” Shafkhat Kudabayev, of the State Revenue Committee, told vlast.kz. The soft drink industry lobby groups have said the new tax will put companies out of business.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 3 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Following earlier electricity price rises in Georgia’s regions, the state regulators approved a similar price increase in the capital.
For the Georgian Dream, the ruling coalition, the price rise means they have barely been able to fulfil one of their promises from the 2012 parliamentary election – to cut the price of electricity and to keep it low.
But, as Akaki Tsomaia, economics professor at the University of Georgia explained, the plunging value of the lari had forced the regulators to agree to the price rise.
“Georgia is experiencing a 45% depreciation of its currency against the US dollar. Electricity and gas providers in Georgia have no other way than to increase the price of these services. Otherwise we will definitely have a major electricity shortage,” he told the Bulletin.
Still, this assessment, which is widely shared, didn’t stop the opposition UNM party blaming the coalition.
“The absence of professionalism led us to this point,” UNM’s deputy chairperson Nika Melia told TV broadcaster Rustavi-2.
Electricity prices have triggered protests in the region, most notably in Armenia where thousands protested earlier this year and forced the government to waive price rises.
In Georgia which is known for its street level politics, however, the population seems to have accepted the rise more quietly although some people did expect protests shortly.
Vladimir, an IT specialist walking along Tbilisi’s central promenade said: “People will probably start next month once they get bills.”
Irakli, 37, who was waiting at a bus stop, agreed but he said that politics, was the key driver of social unrest.
“We’ve taken to the streets so much in the recent two decades, but for other reasons,” he said. “But it all accumulates and only needs one non- social spark to explode.”
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – SOCAR confirmed that it wants to play a role in building a gas-fired power plant in Malta, media reported.
It’s unclear just why SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, would want to build a power plant in Malta but it has an office on the island which it has said it uses to reduce its global tax bill.
SOCAR chairman Abdullayev Rovnag met with Maltese PM Joseph Muscat before a football match between Malta and Azerbaijan to discuss the two countries’ cooperation, local media reported.
There was no more detail from the meeting on the power station.
The Times of Malta, though, reported on SOCAR’s Maltese operations earlier this year. It said that SOCAR had set up a company in Malta in 2007 that acted as the parent company of Geneva-based SOCAR Trading. SOCAR Trading generates billions of dollars each year by trading oil. It saves itself a large chunk of tax, the Times of Malta reported, by booking the profit on these sales in Malta. Malta markets itself as a low tax, offshore base for companies trading in Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — French railway company Alstom has started producing 50 freight locomotive trains for Azerbaijan, media reported. The contract, signed in 2014, is worth around 300m euros. Alstom’s new AZ8A electric locomotives will be built specifically for Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Belarusian dairy producer Turovsky Milk Factory exported its first batch of products to Kyrgyzstan, media reported quoting a company spokesman. The shipment is notable because it appears to suggest that, in this instance, the concept of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union trade bloc is working.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Moody’s ratings agency downgraded three Kazakh banks due to their deteriorating asset quality and their exposure to foreign currency lending. Kazkommertsbank’s baseline credit assessment (BCA) was rated caa2, ATF Bank fell to caa3, and Eurasian Bank was downgraded to caa1. Moody’s also changed the outlook of the three Kazakh lenders, together with Halyk Bank, to negative, highlighting the precarious state of Kazakhstan’s banking sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)