Tag Archives: business

Georgia agrees gas imports from Azerbaijan

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JAN 3 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia will buy almost 100% of its gas supplies from Azerbaijan this year, officials told local media, completing a total switch from Russia-supplied gas. The announcement is, effectively, a continuation of a policy laid out in May last year when Georgia’s then-energy minister Kakha Kaladze said that Georgia would stop buying Russian gas. He had earlier switched the way that Georgia imported Russian gas from a barter deal to a paid-for deal.

— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin

Armenian randy production soars

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JAN 4 (The Conway Bulletin) — Brandy production in Armenia, something of a bellwether for the state of the wider FSU economy, increased by 41% between January and end-November to 27.9m litres, official statistics showed. This comes on top of a 27% increase for the same period in 2016 compared to 2015. Powered by Russia and oil prices, the FSU economies are recovering from a slump in 2014-16.

— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin

Uzbekistan talks to Russia’s Rosatom on developing nuclear power

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DEC. 29 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan is in talks with Russia’s Rosatom to commission building two new nuclear power stations, media reported. Uzbekistan currently relies primarily on gas-fired power stations for its electricity. It is still some way off commissioning a nuclear power station but it has signed various memorandums of understanding with Russia on nuclear power. Relations between Russia and Uzbekistan have improved after Shavkat Mirziyoyev took over as president in 2016.

ENDS

— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin

Turkmenistan briefly cuts power to Afghanistan

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JAN 2 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan cut power supplies to northern Afghanistan for two days after, media has reported, the Afghan authorities refused to pay an increased fee for electricity. Power supplies were renewed after Turkmenistan agreed to delay price increases by a month. Turkmenistan’s economy has been hit hard by a drop in energy prices since 2014.

ENDS

— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin

“Made in Uzbekistan” label to be launched

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JAN 5 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek officials said that they were going to introduce a new label, Uztexile, that will only be given to clothes that meet the highest ethical, environmental and manufacturing techniques, the chairman of the industry association Uztekstilprom, Ilkhom Khaidarov, told media. The new label appears to be another attempt to improve Uzbekistan’s image for cotton. It is a major cotton producer and wants to start processing and exporting an increasing amount of its crop.

— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin

BGEO subsidiary agrees hotel deal

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JAN 2 (The Conway Bulletin) — m2, a subsidiary of BGEO, bought a 50% stake in what it described as a boutique hotel in Tbilisi for $4.1m (Jan. 2). The unnamed hotel is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2019 . BGEO is the investment arm of Bank of Georgia and is being spun off into a separate listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2018. Tourism in Georgia is booming. The sector is concentrated on Tbilisi and its rise has spurred a hotel-building boom.

— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin

Middle East driving tourism boom in Georgia

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JAN 5 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tourism to Georgia boomed in 2017, the head of Georgia’s National Tourism Administration Giorgi Chogovadze told media. The growth in tourism has been one of the biggest drivers of the Georgian economy this year, analysts have said, and much of this tourism drive is coming from the Middle East. While Mr Chogovadze said that tourism numbers from Europe were up around a third, from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran the numbers had more than doubled.

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— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin

Azerbaijan closes EBRD-owned bank

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DEC. 23 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s financial watchdog declared DemirBank, a mid-sized lender part-owned by the EBRD and the Dutch development fund FMO, unfit to trade after bad debt swamped it and its capitalisation ratio level dropped.

Azerbaijan’s banking sector has been flooded with bad debt since a 2014 fall in the price of oil triggered a currency devaluation and a recession. In 2017 its biggest bank, International Bank of Azerbaijan, defaulted on its debt.

The failure of Demirbank shows that part-ownership of a bank by major financial institutions doesn’t guarantee survival. The EBRD owned a 25% stake in Demirbank, and had been considering an increase, and FMO owned a 10% stake.

In March, Fitch, the rating agency, had warned that smaller Azerbaijani banks were vulnerable because of a surge in non-performing loans. It said that the proportion of non-performing loans on banks’ debt books had reached 21% up from 12% in 2015.

Demirbank’s licence to trade was withdrawn on Dec. 23 by Azerbaijan’s Financial Markets Supervision Chamber, a decision upheld by an appeal court four days later.

People who had deposits at the bank will be eligible for compensation from a state fund.
Demirbank had deposits of just over 100m manat ($59m) from 55,000 depositors.

ENDS

— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin

Praise for Georgia’s Central Bank stress tests

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DEC. 26 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision praised Georgia’s Central Bank for bringing in best-practice stress tests for its banks. The Georgian economy, and in particular its finance sector, has weathered a regional economic downturn since 2014 better than its neighbours. Analysts have said that the stress tests that the Georgian Central Bank has imposed are far more effective than other banking tests in the region.

— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin

Georgia to raise electricity prices

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TBILISI, JAN 1 (The Conway Bulletin) — Electricity prices, a touchy issue in the South Caucasus, are due to rise again in Georgia, media reported.

The Georgian National Energy and Water Supply Regulation Commission (GNERC) approved the rise, asked for by power supply companies Telasi and EnergoPro Georgia, because of the cost of infrastructure upgrades.

The rise will be the second increase in electricity prices in Georgia in the past 2-1/2 years. One of the election promises of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition government in 2012, when it was voted into power, was to cut electricity prices.

From the start of the year, Tbilisi residents will now pay 1.56 tetris more per unit of electricity. In August 2015 the price was increased by 3 tetris.

In 2015, proposed electricity price rises in neighbouring Armenia triggered street protests that lasted weeks until the rises were dropped.

ENDS

— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin