JULY 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s railway network said it would cut the cost of freight across its network by 20% to try and boost traffic, media reported. Georgia is an important link between Europe and Asia but freight traffic on its railway has dropped slightly this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JULY 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s economy ministry said that electricity prices may have to rise by 12% this year, media reported. Electricity prices have become an issue in the region because a proposed rise in Armenia has sparked street demonstrations.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JUNE 21-25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – YEREVAN — In an often tense standoff with police, thousands of people demonstrated in Yerevan this week against electricity price rises.
A Bulletin correspondent estimated that the protest had swelled to around 8,000 people by Thursday evening, the biggest anti-government demonstration in Armenia for a generation and one that could pose a serious threat to the authorities.
On Tuesday, the second day of the protest, police fired water cannons and detained more than 200 people as they tried to clear Freedom Square in the centre of the city. The assault, though, just appeared to strengthen protesters’ resolve.
“Our demand remains the same and we will not leave Baghramyan Avenue until the illegal decision on electricity price hike will not be annulled,” said Aram Manukyan, an activist.
Hundreds of protesters have camped out overnight since and called for the 17% electricity price rise to be repealed.
This is the third price rise in two years. RAO UES, the Russian company that owns Armenia’s electricity network, said it needed to increase prices because of the fall in the value of the Armenian dram which makes imports expensive.
The price raises are particularly painful because Armenia, like other countries in the region, is having to deal with a drop in its economic prospects.
Protesters had started to gather in central Yerevan on Monday, June 22, in anticipation of parliament approving the electricity price rise two days later.
The next day, police turned their water cannons against the demonstrators and waded into the crowd, detaining people trying to stage a sit-in.
Since then, the crowds of protesters have swelled but been peaceful.
PM Hovik Abrahamyan said that the protests were misguided.
“Blocking one of the major prospects in the city will not lead to any success. I call on the activists to get back to constructive dialogue,” he said.
In 2008, eight people died in Yerevan when soldiers fired on anti-government demonstrators.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Gazprom wants to raise the price that consumers in Kyrgyzstan pay for their gas, local media reported quoting the director-general of its Kyrgyz subsidiary, Bakyt Abildayev.
This is a particularly sensitive topic because of tense street protests in Yerevan, triggered by the Russian-owned Armenian electricity distributor which wants to raise prices.
“We cannot endlessly subsidize gas industry. I propose to develop a new pricing policy for [the next] three to five years,” Mr Abildayev said.
When Gazprom bought the Kyrgyz gas distribution network in 2013 it was bankrupt and badly needed investment. Gazprom paid a token $1 for the network and promised much needed investment and also to keep prices low. This pleased ordinary Kyrgyz and also the government. It was interpreted as a sweetener as the Kremlin extended its influence over Central Asia and brought Kyrgyzstan into its Eurasian Economic Union (EEU)
Now, though, the situation has changed. Kyrgyzstan has signed up to the EEU and cash is tighter in Russia. The collapse in energy prices has hit Russia hard.
Perhaps this is why, with their allegiance guaranteed, Russia is now looking to increase the price it charges consumers for electricity and gas in Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyz politics often plays out on the street. If Mr Abildayev is serious about increasing gas prices in Kyrgyzstan, he should probably expect a reaction.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The number of cars imported into Azerbaijan dropped by around 50% in the first five months of the year, media reported quoting official statistics.
Between January and May, 13,912 passenger cars were imported into the country, down from 27,444 during the same period last year.
The slump in car imports into Azerbaijan is probably a result of a number of factors.
These include a general economic downturn in the region, linked to a recession in Russia and a drop in oil and gas prices. Russia’s economy drives the former Soviet region and oil and gas is the mainstay of Azerbaijan’s economy.
Also, earlier this year Azerbaijan devalued its manat currency by a third, making imports more expensive.
And in 2014, the Azerbaijani government passed a law which banned car imports not using the higher grade Euro-4 fuel type.
This meant that many older cars from Europe could no longer be imported into Azerbaijan.
The knock on effect of this slump in demand is hitting car prices in Azerbaijan too, economist Vugar Bayramov told the azernews.az website.
He said that as inflation has picked up in Azerbaijan, it has pushed up the price of a new cars but the value for older cars has fallen. “Our monitoring shows that the prices of old cars decreased by 7%,” he said.
Mr Bayramov also said that banks in Azerbaijan had also tightened their finance requirements for cars, requiring a downpayment for financing of 50%, up from 20% earlier.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s ambassador in Delhi, Parahat Durdyev, said that the countries developing the so-called TAPI pipeline what will pump Turkmen gas to the Indian sub-continent will choose their consortium partners by the start of September.
The Kremlin-linked Sputnik news agency quoted Mr Durdyev as saying: “By September 1, the government of Turkmenistan [is] committed to producing the final results of the selection of a consortium and the leader of the consortium.”
TAPI is one of the biggest and most ambitious energy projects in the world. Construction work hasn’t yet started on the 1,650km pipeline which will cross Afghanistan and Pakistan but international organisations such as the World Bank have said that they support the plan.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan banned poultry imports from neighbouring Iran after a reported outbreak of bird flu, media reported quoting a government official who works in the ministry of agriculture’s veterinary department. Iran reported bird flu in the north of the country this month.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s parliament approved a $150m loan from the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) to build a north-south motorway across the country. The EBD is headquartered in Almaty and is bankrolled mainly by Russia and Kazakhstan. It concentrates on member states of the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US Congress said that its ethics committee was investigating whether SOCAR, the Azerbaijani state-owned energy company, paid for a 2013 trip to Baku for 10 congressmen and 32 staff members.
Congress’ rules ban foreign governments paying for overseas trips. All the Congressmen implicated in the investigation deny any wrong-doing and have said that they were unaware that SOCAR had paid for their trips to a conference in Baku.
The Houston Chronicle reported that the focus of the investigation are hundreds of thousands of dollars paid out by SOCAR to two Texas-based non-profit organisations which then paid for trips to Baku.
Azerbaijan’s lobbying techniques have attracted more and more criticism over the past few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran plans to export more refined gas products to Tajikistan and Armenia, Iranian media quoted a senior official at the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company as saying.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)