Tag Archives: business

Tengiz will create 20,000 jobs, says Kazakh ministry

JAN. 30 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The $36.8b expansion of the Tengiz oil field announced last year will create 20,000 jobs, Kazakhstan’s labour ministry said in a statement. Labour minister Birzhan Nurymbetov said that 18,000 of those jobs would be given to Kazakhs. This job creation is vital in Kazakhstan which has seen mass job cuts over the past couple of years because of the tight economic conditions.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

H&M still on track to open store in Kazakh city

JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — H&M, the Swedish fashion retailer, still intends to open its first store in Kazakhstan despite a fall in profit last year, its CEO Karl-Johan Persson said during its full-year results presentation. Mr Persson said that the rising value of the US dollar was one of the main drivers of the drop in profit. Last year H&M said that it would open its first store in Almaty. This is important because analysts have been worried that an economic downturn that has hit the region would hit companies’ plans.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Carmaker in Kazakhstan starts exports to China

FEB. 1 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian carmaker AvtoVAZ has started exporting its Lada 4×4 to China from its factory in Kazakhstan, the life.ru website reported quoting an official at the Asia Auto factory in the east Kazakh city of Ust-Kamenogorsk. Asia Auto is one of the biggest car manufacturers in Kazakhstan. The Kazakh car making sector has been hard hit by the economic downturn.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

New Uzbek bank to support agriculture set up

JAN. 30 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan will set up a new bank called Uzagroexportbank to support agriculture and farm exports, media reported. The new bank is another signal that new president Shavkat Mirziyoyev is trying to boost support for independent businesses. Analysts have previously identified agriculture as a way to boost Uzbekistan’s productivity.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Kazakhstan-focused Nostrum hits 2016 targets

JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In its full year results, Nostrum Oil & Gas, which focuses on Kazakhstan said that it had just beaten its expected output with an average daily output of 40,351/barrels of oil equivalent (boe) compared to an anticipated 40,000 boe. It said that the final quarter of the year had been the best with 44,708 boe.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

CPC says to expand in Kazakhstan

JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Caspian Pipeline Consortium plans to invest $150m in 2017 in expanding the capacity of the pipeline that pumps oil from western Kazakhstan around the northern tip of the Caspian Sea to Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, its general director Nikolay Gorban told media. The expansion plan will boost the pipeline’s capacity to 67m tonnes per year, up from 52m tonnes. This is important because CPC is a key export route for Kazakhstan and especially for its important Tengiz field.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Telia CEO promises sale in Kazakh, Tajik, Uzbek markets

JAN. 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The CEO of Swedish mobile operator Telia, Johan Dennelind, said that he was confident that he would be able to sell off the company’s remaining assets in its Eurasia region this year. Interest in Telia’s regional asset which include Azercell, Geocell, Ucell, Kcell and Tcell have been light. A corruption scandal in Uzbekistan, linked to a 2008 bribe, triggered the sale.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Korea’s Kookmin Bank says will sell stake in Kazakhstan’s CenterCredit

ALMATY, FEB. 1 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — After days of rumours, South Korea’s Kookmin Bank confirmed that it would sell its 41.93% stake in Kazakhstan’s CenterCredit Bank to a Kazakh consortium.

The sale will both end an unhappy time in the Kazakh finance sector for Kookmin Bank and also highlight the worsening weaknesses in the Kazakh system.

CenterCredit is Kazakhstan’s fourth largest bank by assets. The consortium buying Kookmin’s share is lead by Tsenabank, which is the third largest bank in Kazakhstan.

“On the basis of preliminary agreements, the Consortium has completed talks with Kookmin on the final conditions for the Consortium to purchase the stake by the now owned by Kookmin Bank,” Tsenabank said in a statement.

It also said that CenterCredit’s chairman, Bakhytbek Baiseitov, would by the 10% stake in the bank now owned by the International Finance Group, part of the World Bank.

Mr Baiseitov is one of the wealthiest men in Kazakhstan. He set up CenterCredit Bank in the late 1980s and made the original deal to sell a 30% stake in it to Kookmin Bank in 2008 for $500m. Kookmin Bankhave had to write down the value of their stake in CenterCredit Bank constantly and it has become to be viewed as one of their worst ever deals. Shortly after buying their first stake in the bank, the Global Financial Crisis hit the Kazakh finance sector, swamping it with bad debt, forcing the government to bail out a handful of banks.

And Kazakhstan’s banking sector has been hit again by a collapse in the value of the tenge, low oil prices and a recession in Russia. The proportion of non-performing loans has risen.

Last year, the ratings agency Fitch said CenterCredit Bank’s ratings were constrained by “high problem loans, low core capital ratios, and modest core profitability.” It said the proportion of bad loans in its portfolio was around 16%. This was one of the highest, with Tsenabank having a bad debt ratio of around 5%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Analysts place Bank of Georgia shares on a ‘buy’ rating

FEB. 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Shares in the Bank of Georgia rose by more than 50% last year to a peak of 380/$1 in mid-December. Since then they have come off the boil slightly hitting a three-month low of 312/$1 on Jan. 12.

Now, though, things appear to be picking up again. The Bank of Georgia’s share price measured 350/$1 on Feb. 2 and analysts predicted more growth. London- based brokerage Peel Hunt said Bank of Georgia’s subsidiary Georgia Healthcare looked good this year and was likely to see profits rise.

“We update our model to incorporate the strong growth expected in Georgia Healthcare’s profitability,” the broker said, explaining that it had given Bank of Georgia a ‘buy’ rating.

It also said that Georgia’s macroeconomic outlook looked good for Bank of Georgia.

“In addition, we continue to expect Bank of Georgia to benefit from underlying Georgian economic growth, supporting the core Banking division,” the brokerage said.

Last month, Georgia’s Central Bank chief Giorgi Kadagidze said that Georgia’s GDP would grow by more than 4% because of tax cuts, an infrastructure investment plan and a free-trade deal with China.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Start of CASA-1000 pushed back to 2020

BISHKEK, FEB. 1 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A delay in handing out a contract to build two converter stations has pushed back the start date of the CASA-1000 project which aims to send electricity generated by hydropower stations in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Express-Tribune newspaper quoted an unnamed Pakistani official as saying that French engineering company Alstom had asked for more time to put in a bid to build two converter stations.

“Four countries that are part of the project – Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Pakistan – have agreed to give relaxation in the timeframe keeping in view the request of Alstom, which is a credible name and a major supplier of converter stations across the world,” the newspaper quoted the official as saying.

“Now, this project is likely to be ready in 2020.”

CASA-1000 had been due to start up either at the end of this year or in 2018. It is backed by the World Bank and is considered a vital economic and strategic link between Central Asia and South Asia, binding the two regions together, providing an export product for Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and electricity for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The two converter stations are vital to the CASA-1000 project. One will be sited in Tajikistan and the other in Pakistan.

The value of the tender has not been released but the names of the companies bidding for it have been. They are the US’ GE, Japan’s Mitsubishi, Germany’s Siemens and Alstom.

For the West the CASA-1000 project also has major significance as the physical implementation of the north-south Silk Road trade route that Hillary Clinton touted in 2011 when she was US Secretary of State.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)