FEB. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Financial police in Georgia opened a tax investigation into Geocell, its largest mobile phone provider. The authorities said they were searching for alleged large-scale tax evasion. Geocell, which is part of Swedish telecoms group TeliaSonera, denied the allegations.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)
FEB. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Betraying ordinary Kazakh’s nervousness and distrust after the devaluation of the tenge on Feb. 11 by 20%, rumours of a banking collapse spread fast via SMS and triggered a run on several banks.
The banks — Bank Tsenter Kredit, Alliance Bank and Kaspii Bank — all denied that they were in danger of collapsing.
At branches of Kaspii Bank, though, hundreds of people still queued throughout Feb. 18 and Feb. 19 to withdraw their savings despite assurances from the Central Bank that there was no reason to panic.
Saltanat was one of roughly 100 people queuing to withdraw their savings from a Kaspii Bank branch in Almaty.
“They said there won’t be any problem, but why should I believe them?” he said. “They said nothing about the devaluation either. They’re not going to take our money away!”
Confidence in Kazakhstan’s banking sector and the tenge is low.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)
FEB. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kenes Rakishev, closely linked to members of the Kazakh elite, officially became chairman of BTA Bank. In December, Mr Rakishev agreed a deal worth nearly $1b with Kazkommertsbank to buy a 93% stake in BTA Bank from the government. BTA Bank, whose former chairman is Mukhtar Ablyazov who allegedly embezzled billions from the bank, has a high proportion of non-performing loans.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)
FEB. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — ATF Bank, bought by Kazakh investors from Italy’s Unicredit in 2013, made a profit last year for the first time since 2007, media reported. ATF Bank said it made a profit of $9.7m in 2013. The bank is now officially owned by Galymzhan Yessenov, son-in-law of the Almaty’s mayor Akhmetzhan Yessimov.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)
FEB. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek tech developers, possibly under orders from the authorities, unveiled their version of twitter called bamboo.uz. Opponents of the government have described bamboo, which lets users post messages of up to 700 characters, as another attempt to control social media.
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(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)
FEB. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A chastised BP said oil output at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oil fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea fell last year by nearly 2%. ACG has been vital to Azerbaijan’s energy-powered boom and BP has been under pressure to reverse the decline.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)
FEB. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek president Islam Karimov wants to build Uzmobile, a subsidiary of Uztelecom, into a new national mobile phone operator. Uzbekistan has been trying, and failing, to sell kit left by Russia’s MTS when it quit Uzbekistan in 2012 after a row with the authorities over tax.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)
FEB. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s key oil field complex, Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG), produced nearly 2% less oil in 2013 than in 2012, BP said.
ACG forms the backbone of Azerbaijan’s oil output and, although gas is becoming increasingly important, it is still vital to the national economy. In other words, BP’s figures are bad news.
It said that output at ACG dropped to 32.2m tonnes last year from 32.9m tonnes in 2012. In 2010, ACG had produced 40.6m tonnes of oil — nearly 25% more than it did in 2013.
This is doubly galling because Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev had personally told BP to stop the output drop. In response BP committed millions on updating infrastructure and also said that they would replace management.
This had appeared to have made the difference and BP even said that the decline had been stemmed. That, though, now appears premature. There is a slight plus side, though. BP said that although overall oil production at ACG fell last year, total oil and condensate production rose 0.4% to 43.5m tonnes. Condensate is a mixture of hydrocarbons.
BP also said that exports of barrels of oil had also actually risen from ACG to 286.2m from 283.9m, mostly through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
While Azerbaijan ramps up gas production, oil exports from ACG remain its main cash earner. With this in mind, BP has committed to spending another $2.1b on ACG this year.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)
FEB. 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh PM Serik Akhmetov ordered his government to produce a plan to boost the county’s food processing industry, Kazakh media reported. Mr Akhmetov said that although Kazakhstan produces plenty of food, most of its processed food is imported.
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(News report from Issue No. 171, published on Feb. 12 2014)
FEB. 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijani foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov visited Baghdad and said that Iraqi gas could possibly be exported to Europe through the so-called Southern Gas Corridor. Exporting Iraqi gas through Azerbaijan and its Southern Gas Corridor would require Turkish support.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 171, published on Feb. 12 2014)