JUNE 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Underlining increased investment in its transport infrastructure, a (relatively) high-speed train made its inaugural journey across Kazakhstan from Almaty to Atyrau on the Caspian Sea coast. The 2,600km journey, the longest in Kazakhstan, took 35 hours 30 minutes, down from 49 hours.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Production resumed at the Kumtor gold mine in Kyrgyzstan after the authorities lifted a state of emergency. Protesters demanding more benefits from the mine had blockaded the site and clashed with police. The Kyrgyz government and Toronto-listed Centerra Gold, which owns the mine, put a Sept. 10 deadline on talks for a new Kumtor ownership deal.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Uzbek government announced that Russian mobile operator MTS was selling its assets in Uzbekistan for roughly $300m, media reported. Last year the Uzbek government accused MTS’s local subsidiary Uzdunrobita of tax dodging and suspended its operations. MTS said the allegations were false.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
YEREVAN/Armenia, JUNE 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Carrefour, the French supermarket brand famed for its aggressive discount model, was supposed to open its first branch in Armenia last December. It didn’t hit this target although it has established an office in Yerevan.
Rumours on just why Carrefour’s launch has been delayed, drift around the Armenian capital. Most of these suggest that local, well-connected businessmen who control the supermarkets in Armenia don’t want the competition and have called in a few favours to delay the opening.
Regardless, the delay is frustrating people.
“Carrefour is no angel,” Anna Kachatryan, a 40-year-old housewife, said. “But I think that we need this sort of company to establish themselves in Armenia.”
She wanted food prices to drop and thought that Carrefour would help do this.
Armen Safarya, 54, though, said that he worried that Carrefour would become the dominant supermarket in Armenia and would end up harming local producers by pushing down their fees.
“This is not the solution,” he said. “Carrefour will control the entire market and will make local producers suffer.”
Carrefour itself has not explained the delay in opening its first store in Yerevan, although it has insisted that one would open by the end of 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will spend roughly $3.2b a year until 2050 on developing alternative green energy sources and reducing its dependence on coal-fired power stations, energy minister Nurlan Kapparov told media. Coal-fired power stations produce roughly 80% of Kazakhstan’s power.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — As a statement of intent it was emphatic. Kazakhstan’s environmental protection minister Nurlan Kapparov told a news briefing in Astana on June 5 that the state would invest $3.2b a year until 2050 on developing alternative sources of power to reduce its reliance on coal.
Mr Kapparov said that this was the equivalent of 1% of Kazakhstan’s annual total GDP.
This scale of commitment is genuinely large and will put Kazakhstan in the top league of countries committed to reducing their reliance on coal-fired power stations.
Currently, coal-fired power stations generate about 80% of Kazakhstan’s power needs.
The initiative to push for green alternative power sources is an indicator of a developed economy, just the sort of image that Kazakhstan wants to project. It is also part of Kazakhstan’s wider policies for both power production and for winning EXPO-2017. One of the themes of EXPO-2017 is green energy.
Kazakhstan has already made headway in developing alternative energy. This year it has announced initiatives to boost wind, hydro-electric, solar and nuclear power.
Mr Kapparov said that he wanted to see green energy make up half of Kazakhstan’s total production by 2050.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan started construction on a new rail link that should boost trade between the three neighbours, media reported. The 400km route will run from Panj on the Tajik-Afghan border, across northern Afghanistan to Atamyrat in central Turkmenistan and cost $1.5b to build.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
MAY 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — On a trip to Ashgabat, Turkish President Abdullah Gul signed a framework deal with his Turkmen counterpart Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov to transport gas from Turkmenistan to Europe. Turkmenistan is looking for additional transport routes to pump gas to clients in Europe, China and the Middle East.
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(News report from Issue No. 137, published on June 3 2013)
MAY 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) agreed to give Uzbekistan a $270m grant to buy two new Boeing airplanes for its national airline and to modernise its hydro-electric stations. The IDB, a multinational institution, has been one of Uzbekistan’s biggest donors in recent years.
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(News report from Issue No. 137, published on June 3 2013)
MAY 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s ministry of agriculture warned that a large plague of locusts was likely to infest parts of north and west Kazakhstan. The ministry’s press release said serious locust plagues were cyclical and that the last major infestation was in 2000.
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(News report from Issue No. 137, published on June 3 2013)