Tag Archives: business

Tajik CB auctions failed banks property

DUSHANBE, JUNE 29 2017 (The Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s Central Bank said that it would auction off property belonging to two failed banks Tochprombonk and Fononbonk, a very public humbling for two prominent Tajik financial institutions.

The government withdrew the banking licences for Tochprombonk and Fononbonk on Feb. 24, effectively declaring them bankrupt, having tried to rescue them last year in a $490m bailout of the banking sector. It was more successful propping up Tajikistan’s two main banks, Tojiksodirotbonk and Agroinvestbank, which appear to have survived an economic downturn.

Tajikistan, like the rest of Central Asia, has been grappling with the impact of a collapse in oil prices that triggered a recession in Russia. Russia is the main driver of economic activity in the region and its recession had a heavy knock-on effect in Central Asia, which, to a large extent is reliant on remittances sent back by migrants working in Russia.

The Tajik banking sector has been heavily criticised by international organisations for is weaknesses. In April the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said that the Tajik banking sector needed to improve is transparency and increase capital levels. Last year the IMF said that the banking sector in Tajikistan was “dire”. Bad loans were now over 50% of the total loan portfolio.

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(News report from Issue No. 335, published on July 3 2017)

Kazmunaigas confirms deal with ENI

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JUNE 27 2017 (The Bulletin) — Kazakh state oil and gas company Kazmunaigas confirmed a deal with ENI that will transfer a 50% stake in the Isatay block in the Caspian Sea to Italy’s ENI. Under the deal the two companies will jointly explore the Isatay block for exploitable oil and gas reserves. ENI has been playing a lead role in developing the Kashagan offshore oil project in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea.

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(News report from Issue No. 335, published on July 3 2017)

EBRD and DEG stabilise Azerbaijan’s Unibank

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JUNE 24 2017 (The Bulletin) — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Germany’s state development agency, DEG, agreed to recapitalise Azerbaijan’s Unibank, highlighting the precarious state of the Azerbaijani finance sector (June 26).

In a statement, the EBRD said it had written off $9m of debt in exchange for increasing its stake in Unibank to 22% and that DEG had written of $15m of debt to increase its stake to 27.5%. Previously, media reported that the EBRD had owned a 12.15% stake in Unibank, a mid-sized
bank, and DEG had owned a 6.7%.

Unibank’s main shareholder is in Unibank’s mid-sized Azerbaijani Eldar Garibov, an Azerbaijani businessman with stakes in a range of companies.

Although there was no overt indication of why the EBRD and DEG had written of Unibank’s debt, last year Fitch, the ratings agency, downgraded the bank’s debt to default.

In a statement, Ivana Duarte, head of the EBRD office in Baku, said: “The EBRD supports Unibank, its longstanding partner in Azerbaijan, to recapitalise it alongside its main shareholders and contribute to the stabilisation and recovery of the economy and banking sector in the country.”

In May, the EBRD said that it was also considering buying a large stake in Unibank’s mid-sized Azerbaijani rival Demirbank.

Azerbaijan has been particularly hard hit by a collapse in oil prices since 2014, with GDP shrinking and the manat currency devaluing. And this economic malaise has hurt the finance sector which had lent heavily to Azerbaijani consumers.

The proportion of bad loans in the system jumped up, forcing smaller banks to merge or fold. In 2016, a quarter of Azerbaijan’s 44 banks had their licences revoked for being too unstable.

The country’s biggest bank, International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), is currently trying to persuade its creditors holding debt of $3.3b to take a 20% writedown in their investments to allow it to restructure.

” A court in New York granted IBA bankruptcy protection on June 28, a month and a half after it said it needed to restructure its debt.

Western creditors have complained that the restructuring scheme, triggered after IBA missed defaulted on a debt repayment in May, was unfair and stacked against them in favour of Azerbaijani creditors. They had threatened to scupper the restructuring unless more favourable terms were agreed.

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(News report from Issue No. 335, published on July 3 2017)

Business looks good for Kazakhstan’s discount voucher market

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ALMATY, JUNE 26 2017 (The Bulletin) — Chocolife.me, the Kazakh discount voucher company modelled on the US’ Groupon, has bought its rival BeSmart for an undisclosed amount, its CEO, Ramil Mukhoryapov, told The Bulletin in an interview.

In the interview, Mr Mukhoryapov gave an upbeat assessment of the discount market in Kazakhstan, saying that the economic downturn of the past three years had, in some ways, driven growth.

“We feel that the additional trigger was the devaluation. People became a bit poorer and they had more stimulus to save (money through discount vouchers),” he said.

In 2015, the Kazakh tenge lost around 50% of its value. Central Asia and the South Caucasus have been dealing with a sudden drop in the value of oil and gas from 2014 which knocked revenues and triggered a recession in Russia, the region’s economic driver.

Mr Mukhoryapov said, though, that although the collapse of the tenge had hit the US dollar valuation of Chocolife.me, the market had been growing by 25% to 30% a year.

Chocolife.me, and BeSmart, vouchers typically offer discounts on family days out at water parks and funfairs, as well as dental polishing services and manicures.

Combined, the two brands will have a near 100% share of the discount voucher market in Kazakhstan, Mr Mukhoryapov said. He declined to say how much the market was currently worth or how much Chocolife.me, set up in 2011, had paid for BeSmart but he did emphase the role that the business played in the Kazakh economy.

“The market of collective purchases is a very small part of the advertisement market. If we look, what we do is we help advertise, promote (services),” he said.

For analysts, deals in the Kazakh retail market suggest that consumer confidence in Kazakhstan may, just, be beginning to improve.

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(News report from Issue No. 335, published on July 3 2017)

Uzbek President orders new airport

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JUNE 30 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has ordered officials in Tashkent to build a new airport from scratch, apparently dropping plans to build a new terminal for international flights at the current airport. The decree, did not say when the new airport would be completed or how much it would cost.

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(News report from Issue No. 335, published on July 3 2017)

Carrefour to open in Georgia

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JUNE 22 2017 (The Bulletin) — Highlighting Georgia’s improving economy, Dubai-based retail company Majid Al Futtim signed a deal with Wissol Group to launch another Carrefour store in Georgia at a new shopping centre outside Batumi. Majid Al Futtim currently runs two Carrefour hyper- markets in Georgia and six super- markets. By comparison, this year Majid Al Futtim said that it was closing its only Carrefour store in Kazakhstan because the economy and market were too small. It had been only been open for 15 months.

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(News report from Issue No. 334, published on June 26 2017)

Kazakhstan needs an improved civil service says EBRD chairman

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JUNE 22 2017 (The Bulletin) — In a speech at Nazarbayev University, EBRD chairman Suma Chakrabarti said that Kazakhstan still needed to improve its various structures to help businesses. In his speech he highlighted governance as particular concern. He said that the quality and size of the civil service needed to be improved and strengthened and state-led programmes needed become more effective at increasing exports and diversifying the economy.

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(News report from Issue No. 334, published on June 26 2017)

EBRD loans gold project in Kazakhstan

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JUNE 22 2017 (The Bulletin) — The EBRD agreed a loan of $140m for Bakyrchik Mining Venture, a subsidiary of London-listed Polymetal International, to develop the Kyzyl gold deposit in Kazakhstan. The EBRD said that the loan would create 400 jobs and ensure good governance over the project. Previous mining projects in Kazakhstan have been plagued by governance issues.

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(News report from Issue No. 334, published on June 26 2017)

Azerbaijan’s IBA improves restructuring deal

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JUNE 19 2017 (The Bulletin) — The International Bank of Azerbaijan bowed to pressure from its creditors to improve the terms of its proposed restructuring deal.

Essentially the new terms ensure more flexibility for IBA creditors and slightly higher and more frequent interest payments. They had accused the bank of preparing a restructuring programme that favours Azerbaijani debt holders.

IBA has presented different options to creditors holding $3.3b of debt, although the bottom line was that they will lose around 20% of their investments. It had said that creditors could only choose one option although it has now mellowed on this demand.

“The ‘first come, first served’ allocation mechanism has been changed to an 11 business day early bird period,” IBA said in a statement.

IBA said in May that it had missed a deadline to repay a creditor and that it needed to restructure $3.3b of debt. The announcement rocked investors and analysts who have been warning that the Azerbaijani banking system was teetering towards a default.

Bondholders were still sceptical of the new deal, saying that it was not much improved from the original proposition.

The FT quoted Lutz Roehmeyer, a portfolio manager at Landesbank Berlin as saying that he would vote against the new proposal. “International investors can’t understand why an oil-rich country with a huge sovereign wealth fund does not have the money to pay back,” he said.

Other creditors warned that Azerbaijan has damaged its reputation and will find it harder to borrow money in the future and that it needed to do much more to diversify its economy away from oil and gas.

They now have until July 18 to approve the deal.

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(News report from Issue No. 334, published on June 26 2017)

Uzbekneftgaz wants new branding

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JUNE 21 2017 (The Bulletin) — Perhaps embracing the country’s new era of openness, Uzbekistan’s state-owned oil and gas company Uzbekneftegas plans to throw off its Soviet-style branding. The company, which runs the Uzbek energy sector, has said that it wants a new logo and a new slogan that can be translated into Uzbek, Russian and English.

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(News report from Issue No. 334, published on June 26 2017)