MARCH 14 2015 (The Bulletin) – Georgia received nearly 8% less visitors in January and February this year compared to the same period last year, media reported quoting government figures. Some analysts blamed the drop on tightened visa regulations for visitors from China, Iran, Iraq and Egypt.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 16 2015 (The Bulletin) – Food prices in Azerbaijan rose in February by 6.6%, media reported quoting the state statistics agency. Economists have been warning that Azerbaijan may be facing inflation after a sudden devaluation by 33% of the manat in February.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 12 2015 (The Bulletin) – Armenia is planning a bond issue to help it through the current financial crisis, Reuters reported quoting sources. Armenia’s last bond was issued in September 2013 and was worth $700m.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 13 2015 (The Bulletin) – Garment production in Kyrgyzstan dropped by 50% in the first two months of the year, media quoted the Kyrgyz national statistics agency as saying. The agency did not say why clothing output had plummeted but it may be linked to the regional economic downturn.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 11 2015 (The Bulletin) – The Kyrgyz som has lost nearly 5% of its value against the US dollar this year, media quoted the head of the Central Bank, Tolkunbek Abdygulov, as saying. Mr Abdygulov also said that he wanted to impose strict capital requirements for Kyrgyzstan’s banks
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 17 2015 (The Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s economy will probably grow by 1.5% in 2015 despite a downturn in regional conditions, Reuters quoted EBRD economist Dmitry Gvindadze as saying. He said Azerbaijan’s oil fund, worth $50b, had created a buffer that meant Azerbaijan could weather the economic storm.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 16 2015 (The Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s GDP in January was nearly 17% lower than for the same month in 2015, the Central Bank said in its monthly report on the state of the economy.
In January, Azerbaijan generated receipts worth 3.63b manat ($3.46b) compared to 4.36b manat in January 2014. This means that Azerbaijan is slipping towards a recession.
The Central Bank slashed the value of the manat by 33% last month and most media in Azerbaijan, which is generally pliant and pro-government, spun the drop as a rise in real GDP because of the devaluation.
Many economists disagreed, though. Samir Aliyev, an economist at the Center for Assistance to Economic Initiatives in Baku, said this heavy drop in GDP is more evidence that the combined impact of the drop in global oil prices and also the downturn in Russia’s economy have hit Central Asia and the South Caucasus hard.
“We witnessed such a big drop only in 2008 and 2009 during the global economic crisis, when oil prices slipped down,” he said. “However, to call it a recession we should have numbers for at least three months.”
The trickle-down effect of the collapse in oil prices from the summer of 2014 — prices fell by around 50% — has only just begun to seriously dent Azerbaijan’s economy. January was the first month that GDP dropped.
Data from the Central Bank also showed that Azerbaijan’s non-oil economy — which international economists said needs to grow — increased by 5%.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 18 2015 (The Bulletin) – Ordinary Kazakhs have lost faith in the Central Bank and are expecting a tenge devaluation, media quoted Halyk Bank CEO, Umut Shayakhmetova as saying. She said the proportion of savings held in foreign currency had now risen to 70%. The Central Bank has promised not to devalue the tenge.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 18 2015 (The Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s statistics agency said that it had received a donation of $2.5m which it said will help strengthen is systems, vital for measuring the economic and social health of the country, the 24.kg website reported. Akylbek Osmonoliyev, head of the statistics agency, did not say where the funds originated.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 18 2015 (The Bulletin) – The Georgian government sold the 35-storey Batumi Tower for $25.4m to a development company, generating much needed cash and ridding itself of one of former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s pet projects.
The blue and white tower with a golden ferris wheel set halfway up one of its sides has always generated wonder and ridicule.
Mr Saaskhvili, who was Georgian president from 2003 until 2013, had wanted the tower to serve as a Georgian-American technical university. His detractors said that it was a wasteful white elephant.
It has been unoccupied since it was finished in 2012.
Lika Glonti, an educational expert based in Tbilisi said: “I do think that this kind of building was not optimal for a university, but this is rather an issue of a taste. Selling Batumi Tower is a consequence of cancelling the idea of Batumi Technological University.”
The building was auctioned a day before the finance and economy ministries announced their plans to tackle the economic crisis. The local currency, the Lari, has fallen sharply against the dollar in the past few months and economists have revised down their economic growth predictions for this year.
A global collapse in oil prices and economic turmoil in Russia have impacted the wider former Soviet region.
On March 12, the economy ministry announced the privatisation of more assets, part of a larger three year plan to see it through the financial crisis that has swamped the region over the past few months.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)