MARCH 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s Central Bank bought $11.4m worth of som to slow its devaluation, media reported, its third intervention in March. Kyrgyzstan, like other countries in the region, has been trying to manage a fall in the value of its currency.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
APRIL 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia used its control of gas supplies to Armenia to pressure the government into joining its Eurasian Economic Union, a parliamentary inquiry has said.
The inquiry said Russia increased gas prices to Armenia until it agreed to join the Eurasian Economic Union in 2013.
The findings are strong evidence that Russia uses its economic leverage over Central Asia and the South Caucasus for political gain.
Also in the past week, Russia approved a $1 billion development fund for Kyrgyzstan. This, again, appears linked to Kyrgyzstan’s entry to the Eurasian Economic Union later this year.
The West has long said the Kremlin’s aim in the region is to coerce governments into doing its bidding.
In Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, it has found vulnerable partners. Both are relatively poor with few natural resources. They both host Russian military bases and are reliant on Russian business and remittances from workers living in Russia for growth.
Importantly too, Gazprom owns the gas pipeline network in both Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. This has often been the choke point. Controlling a country’s gas supply gives Russia huge power.
There is one other major similarity between Armenia and Kyrgyzstan regarding membership of the Eurasian Economic Union. Bulletin correspondents in both countries report that most ordinary people, and also many of the politicians, don’t really want to join the group. Instead, they feel compelled to.
Belarus and Kazakhstan, both far larger economies, are also members of the EEU.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia has approved a law that will create a Russia-Kyrgyzstan development fund worth $1b, media reported. Kyrgyzstan has agreed to join the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union later this year and it is likely that the fund’s creation was linked to Kyrgyz membership of the group.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Worsening economic conditions in Tajikistan have even knocked the value of bribes in the notoriously corrupt country, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. It said that the value of bribes had halved over the past few months.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Central Bank kept its key interest rate at 4.5%, confounding expectations of another rate rise to counter a fall in the value of its lari currency. The Central Bank said the current inflation rate did not merit a rate rise although it also said that a gradual devaluation would probably push prices up.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Banks in Azerbaijan are passing on costs triggered by the devaluation of the manat to their clients, the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) said.
The most vulnerable are people who took out loans in foreign currencies before the devaluation.
IWPR quoted local media which attributed two suicides to the devaluation and the sudden increased cost of repaying debt.
It also suggested that the commercial banks have been breaking the law by making people pay back loans at the new, weaker, exchange rate.
The IWPR quoted a Supreme Court judge saying that banks should continue to charge consumers the rate they took the loan out originally.
Experts have warned Azerbaijan that it needs to reduce consumers’ debt burdens to ensure its economic security.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Remittances to Georgia in January and February dropped 30%, media reported quoting the World Bank. Georgia, like other countries in the region, is suffering the knock-on effects generated by the fall in oil prices and economic turmoil in Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan increased its export of electricity to Afghanistan by 58% in January and February, Tajik media reported quoting the national statistics agency. Electricity is seen as an important commodity produced by Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state energy company, said it will ask the Central Bank for a 1b manat ($925m) loan to build an oil, gas and petrochemicals plant. This is important because last year SOCAR delayed construction of the $16.5b plant because its funds had dried up.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 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)