JULY 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The World Bank approved a $305m loan to Uzbekistan to update and modernise its motorway network and a second loan of $105m to improve the irrigation network in the Bukhara region, media reported. Human rights groups have criticises the world Bank for the loans.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Four construction workers in Tbilisi died when part of a building they were demolishing fell on them, media reported. The former Institute for Physics and Mathematics was being demolished to make way for a hotel. The accident highlights Georgia’s poor construction safety record.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JUNE 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Foreign direct investment (FDI), so important to Georgia’s economy, halved in the first three months of this year compared to the last quarter of 2014, GeoStat, the Georgian statistics agency, said.
GeoStat measured total FDI in Georgia at $175m, down from $349m in Q4 2014. Georgia’s attractiveness as a foreign investment destination was rebounding after the global economic crisis of 2008/9 and a war against Russia in 2008, so the data will disappoint.
Apart from the second quarter of 2014, this was the weakest FDI data for Georgia since 2009. The biggest drop was in construction and manufacturing, reflecting the recession which has hit the region, triggered by a struggling Russian economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan is looking for foreign partners to invest in the $16.5b oil, gas and petrochemicals processing plant it plans to build near Baku, a senior executive at the plant told Reuters. Azerbaijan has delayed completing the plant because of a lack of funds.
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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)
JUNE 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, the national railway company, is building a new ferry terminal on the Caspian Sea, media reported.The terminal, at Kuryk south of Aktau, should be operational by December 2016 and highlights Kazakhstan’s drive to boost its trade across the Caspian Sea.
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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)
MAY 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – China’s Export-Import Bank has agreed to give a loan of $185m to Kyrgyzstan to help it build a road and tunnel between the north and south of the country, media reported. China has been funding more and more projects in Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 232, published on May 20 2015)
APRIL 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Subsidiaries of Italian building company Maire Tecnimont have won a contract worth 350m euros to construct a plant producing the plastic polypropylene in Azerbaijan. This will be the first polypropylene plant in Azerbaijan and is part of a new petrochemical complex announced last month.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
APRIL 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Construction of the Turkmenbashi International Sea Port on the Caspian Sea has been ongoing since 2013 but the Turkmen authorities have only just officially appointed a controlling agent to check on progress of the project, according to press reports.
The Italian company Rina Services have now been made the official controllers of the project.
The Turkmenbashi International Sea Port is a crucial piece of infrastructure for Turkmenistan as it should open it up further to Europe.
Inaugurated in August 2013 by Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, then PM and now president, the new Turkmenbashi port is being built by the Turkish company Gap Insaat for $1.5b.
Rina Services will be awarded $10m to act as the controller, a key third-party role to check the progress and the execution of the project.
The company, based out of the port city of Genoa, has certified Dragon Oil’s pipelines in Turkmenistan and is also active in Kazakhstan, where it audits and supervises Kashagan’s D-Island.
Michele Francioni, CEO at Rina Services, told the Italian financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore: “(Rina Services) has had a presence there [Turkmenistan] for some time with deeply rooted local organisations.”
According to the plan, construction should be completed by 2017 . The port should facilitate east-west trade.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
MARCH 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s president launched construction of a new city to be built in a desert in the north of the country, media reported. The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said the project is designed to generated jobs in the region and that the city would be home to 250,000 people.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 17 2015 (The Bulletin) – Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev flew to Kars in Turkey to launch construction of the $10b Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) which will pump gas from the Caspian to Europe. Also present were Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan and Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)