JULY 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Hundreds of people continued to protest in central Yerevan against a potential price rise for electricity, although a Bulletin correspondent at the demonstration said that the numbers and the intensity have dropped off.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Enguri hydropower plant in Georgia sold 400,000 carbon credits to Statkraft, a Norwegian electricity company, media reported. The deal highlights the progress Enguri has made in becoming more professional. It is the largest power plant in Georgia, generating 40% of its electricity.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
Indian PM Narendra Modi travelled to Turkmenistan as part of this grand tour of Central Asia and urged for progress on a gas pipeline that will pump Turkmen gas to India to be accelerated.
TAPI, the name of the pipeline, is due to select its consortium leader on Sept. 1 and Mr Modi told Turkmen leader Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov that he wanted the construction phase to begin soon.
“The most significant initiative in our relationship is the TAPI Gas Pipeline,” he said in a statement released to the media. “This could transform regional economic cooperation and bring prosperity along the route. We welcomed the agreements between the four countries for the pipeline. We underlined the need to implement the project quickly.”
The TAPI project is ambitious. It envisions a route across Afghanistan and Pakistan to India.
And Mr Modi appeared aware of the potential problems this route could encounter.
He also suggested that, if there were problems, a land-sea route via Iran could be used to ship gas to India from Turkmenistan.
TAPI is slated to cost around $10b and to run for 1,800km.
JULY 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Competition Agency fined the country’s five largest petrol retailers $23m for price fixing. The companies fined were SOCAR Georgia Petroleum, Sun Petroleum Georgia, Rompetrol Georgia, Wissol Petroleum Georgia, and Lukoil Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TALCO, the aluminium smelter in Tajikistan, exported 3.6% more aluminium in the first half of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014, the statistics agency said. TALCO is one of the biggest aluminium smelters in the world and generates around 70% of Tajikistan’s foreign currency earnings.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a move designed to plug a gap in it finances, Kazakhstan issued a $4b bond in two tranches.
These 10 and 30 year eurobonds with an initial yield of 3% and 3.5% over their US Treasuries equivalents were the second debt issued by Kazakhstan since October 2014, highlighting just how heavily a drop in oil prices had hit its budget.
And bond traders said that the yield, a measure of the risk factor attached to taking on the debt, had been relatively high.
“Remarkably, the placement yields are even higher than Russian sovereign bond yields,” Reuters quoted Alexey Bulgakov, a senior credit analyst at Sberbank, as saying.
Kazakhstan had not been active in the sovereign debt market since 2000, so two issues in the past nine months show how badly Kazakhstan needs the cash.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Trade turnover between Kyrgyzstan and Russia fell by 17.3% in January-May 2015 as compared to the same period in 2014, according to the Russian Customs Service. This is more evidence of the knock on effect on Central Asia of Russia’s economic downturn.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s oil exports fell by 2.5% in the first half of 2015 because of a drop in production, Reuters reported quoting a source in the state statistics committee. Oil and gas exports make up 75% of government revenue.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – An estimated 145 Kazakh and Chinese miners brawled in a canteen at a mine in eastern Kazakhstan on July 8, media reported. The brawl, which reportedly hospitalised 31 men, highlights the underlying ethnic tension at many Kazakhstan-China joint ventures.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – India’s government ratified an agricultural deal with Armenia which should boost trade between the two countries, media reported. India is looking to boost relations with Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)