DEC. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank, based in Manila, has agreed to give Tajikistan $136m to upgrade one of its biggest hydropower plants, media reported. This is the largest single ADB loan to Tajikistan. Tajikistan is heavily reliant on hydropower for its electricity. There are frequent shortages during winter.
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(News report from Issue No. 164, published on Dec. 11 2013)
DEC. 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Profits from SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, are disappearing offshore through a network of faceless companies controlled by one mysterious man.
That’s the short version of how Azerbaijan’s energy sector is run according to the London-based anti-corruption lobby group Global Witness in their new report entitled “Azerbaijan Anonymous”.
“While SOCAR and its partners may well have acted within the law, the lack of transparency about SOCAR’s partners and how they came to be involved in the Azerbaijani oil industry raises questions over potential conflicts of interest, preferential treatment, and the risk of corruption,” Global Witness wrote.
SOCAR has denied that it has done anything illegal and said in response: “The Republic of Azerbaijan is a founding member of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) task force subjecting the reviews of SOCAR to thorough examination and auditing.”
The EITI is a group set up to monitor whether resource-rich countries spend their revenues responsibly. Global Witness’s report criticised EITI too and said it was a weak institution with little genuine influence.
On Azerbaijan, the Global witness report said that Anar Aliyev, the mysterious owner of several companies linked to SOCAR, was virtually unknown and that he was working on behalf of several higher profile individuals. It said that Mr Aliyev was formally responsible for dozens of companies which have generated $375m profit over five years.
Aliyev is a common surname in Azerbaijan and Anar Aliyev has no family connection with Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s president.
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(News report from Issue No. 164, published on Dec. 11 2013)
DEC. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — China plans to invest a reported $8b into Kazakhstan’s coal mining sector, Kairat Karmanov, the head of the state-owned Kaznex Invest, told journalists. He said the investments are earmarked for Kazakhstan’s industrial heartland around Karaganda. China has been investing heavily in Kazakhstan over the past decade.
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(News report from Issue No. 163, published on Dec. 4 2013)
NOV. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The World Bank’s IFC is considering a loan to Britain’s Virgin Media to help it enter a clutch of new markets — including Kazakhstan — media reported.
Virgin Media’s main shareholder is the flamboyant entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson and its potential entry into Kazakhstan should be equally colourful.
All this is good news for Kazakhstan’s mobile sector, currently dominated by a joint-venture between Sweden’s TeliaSonera and Kazakhtelecom and another joint-venture between Russia’s VimpelCom and a private Kazakh company, and its growing hoard of mobile users.
It also groups Kazakhstan with more traditional emerging markets such as Turkey, Poland and Russia.
Kazakhstan’s mobile phone sector has been growing fast and looks set to continue to grow. Mobile phone penetration is rising rapidly in Kazakhstan — recent figures put the rate at 130%. Like other emerging markets, mobile phones have become the must-have accessory for the upwardly mobile, if that is the correct term.
BeMyMobile ltd, controlled by Virgin Mobile Central & Eastern Europe, officially applied to the IFC for the loan. If the bid to the IFC is successful, Virgin will expand as a provider of wireless services into Poland and Turkey first and will prepare to break into the Russian and Kazakh markets. It wants to be a so-called virtual provider. This mean that it won’t build any new infrastructure but repackage existing deals.
Virgin Media signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Kazakhtelecom during British PM David Cameron’s visit to Kazakhstan at the end of June.
If Virgin media does enter Kazakhstan it may also offer other services such as internet and satellite television, similar to its current operations in Britain.
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(News report from Issue No. 163, published on Dec. 4 2013)
DEC. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Spanish company is considering investing in the Kazakh Caspian Sea port of Aktau, the head of the state-owned Kaznex Invest, Kairat Karmanov, told media. Mr Karmanov didn’t name the Spanish company considering the deal. Aktau is Kazakhstan’s largest port and is key to exports to Europe and beyond.
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(News report from Issue No. 163, published on Dec. 4 2013)
DEC. 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Bank plans to buy $500m-$600m of Asian securities as part of its investment portfolio, local media quoted the Bank’s deputy chairman Avtandil Babayev as saying. Azerbaijan has developed a reputation as a big spender on foreign markets over the past few years with property, equity and debt purchases.
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(News report from Issue No. 163, published on Dec. 4 2013)
DEC. 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Uzbekistan ditched a tax evasion investigation into Russian telecoms company VimpelCom and its brand Beeline. Pressure had been building on VimpelCom throughout the year. Earlier in the year, VimpelCom’s Russian rival MTS quit Uzbekistan after tax evasion charges were levied.
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(News report from Issue No. 163, published on Dec. 4 2013)
DEC. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s Prosecutor-General launched an investigation into possible child labour practices in southern Kazakhstan after it found 700 children picking cotton, media reported. International organisations have criticised Central Asia’s cotton industry, and in particular Uzbekistan, for using children to pick cotton harvests.
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(News report from Issue No. 163, published on Dec. 4 2013)
NOV. 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Two workers died and 26 are still ill after they were poisoned while working at an oil services company in Zhanaozen, west Kazakhstan, media reported. The location of the poisoning is extra sensitive in Kazakhstan because Zhanaozen was the scene of anti-government rioting in 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 163, published on Dec. 4 2013)
NOV. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The World Bank’s IFC is considering giving Britain’s Virgin Media a loan to help it expand into a group of emerging markets including Kazakhstan, media reported. Virgin Media signed a memorandum of understanding with Kazakhtelecom earlier this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 163, published on Dec. 4 2013)