JULY 24 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekneftegaz, the Uzbek state energy company, has completed the first phase of an upgrade of the Mubarek Gas Processing Plant near Bukhara for $170m, Uzbekistan’s economy ministry said. Upgrading the 1971 gas processing plant is part of a wider investment project to modernise Uzbekistan’s infrastructure.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 145, published on July 29 2013)
JULY 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Work has begun on building Georgia’s first wind farm, media quoted the Georgian minister for energy, Kakha Kaladze, as saying. Mr Kaladze said a small wind farm capable of producing 20MW of power would be operational in central Georgia by 2014. If the project is a success, more wind farms are planned.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 145, published on July 29 2013)
JULY 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon has officially opened the first oil refinery in Tajikistan. The refinery has the capacity to process around 100,000 tonnes of oil a year. Russia, which had supplied Tajikistan with most of its oil products, will supply oil to the new refinery.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has given Azerbaijan’s AccessBank credit worth $50m media reported. AccessBank, set up in 2002, operates dozens of branches in Azerbaijan’s regions and gives loans to small and medium-sized businesses. AccessBank’s debt portfolio for agriculture businesses has grown in the last few years.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Tajik authorities have said they have found a body in a river that could be the leader of the minority Uzbek group in Tajikistan, Salim Shamsiddinov, who went missing in March, media reported. Analysts have said Mr Shamsiddinov’s disappearance may be linked to his business interests or to his politics.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan has been on something of a spending spree. Whether through SOFAZ, the state’s oil fund, or through SOCAR, the state energy company, Azerbaijan’s government has spent millions of dollars on overseas investments.
These included properties in some of the world’s most expensive cities — SOFAZ bought an office block in London’s St James’ for $286m in 2012, then spent $180m on property in Paris and $133m on a building in Moscow — as well as large currency deals and gold purchases.
Property prices in London and Paris are soaring and gold is seen as a sensible long-term bet so these appear solid investments. Azerbaijan’s latest investment, though, strikes an off-beat cord.
Azerbaijani and Russian news website reported comments made in Moscow by the visiting PM of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, on July 12. He said SOCAR had agreed to spend 500m euro building a new luxury resort on Montenegro’s attractive Adriatic coast.
Various websites have since reported that two private companies, Triangle Investments and Developments Limited and Azmont Investments LLC, will pursue the project on behalf of SOCAR.
For most countries, spending 500m euro on building a luxury resort in Montenegro is a risky investment choice.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Armenian and Iranian chambers of commerce have signed a deal designed to increase business between the countries, media reported. Armenia has been slowly building ties with Iran. Earlier this month, reportedly under pressure from the US, Georgia scrapped visa-free travel for Iranians.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Eurocopter Kazakhstan Engineering, a joint venture set up in 2011 between Kazakhstan and Europe’s EADS, plans to start making attack helicopters by the end of 2013, officials said in Astana. According to press reports Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are interested in buying the helicopters.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — At a meeting in Tashkent, Uzbek President Islam Karimov and China’s foreign minister Wang Yi pledged to boost cooperation between the two countries. China has been steadily increasing its economic and diplomatic interests in Uzbekistan. Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to visit Uzbekistan in September.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Infant mortality is an important benchmark for a country’s development, both economically and socially.
That’s why the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum includes infant mortality in its Global Competitiveness Index. That’s also why it matters that Unicef, the UN agency for children, reported on July 15 that Kazakhstan’s infant mortality has dropped by two-thirds since 1990.
Of course, it’s been all change in Kazakhstan since 1990 when it was a member of the Soviet Union. Back then, Nursultan Nazarbayev was chairman of the Kazakh Soviet. Almaty was the capital and the massive oil investments, funded mainly by foreign companies, were merely bare plans.
Now Kazakhstan is booming, economically, and socially.
Its public health service, though, is often derided as corrupt and inefficient so when Unicef said that infant deaths had fallen from 54 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to under 19 in 2012, it was consider something of a double success.
This is a clear boost for the Kazakh health service and, in economic terms, matches Kazakhstan’s development. That said, there is some way still to go. According to the World Bank, even the poorest country in the European Union, Bulgaria, has an infant mortality rate of roughly half that of Kazakhstan.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)