JAN. 31 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In its 54-page quarterly inflation report, Kazakhstan’s Central Bank said that between July and September 2013 prices rose by only 0.6% — the slowest rate for a decade. Kazakhstan has previously said that it is focusing on battling slowing inflation.
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(News report from Issue No. 170, published on Feb. 5 2014)
JAN. 31 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The ratings company Standard & Poor’s gave its assessment of Azerbaijan’s economy. It expected economic growth of about 5% this year but said that there were some risks, especially the high consumer lending levels and growing inflationary pressure.
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(News report from Issue No. 170, published on Feb. 5 2014)
JAN. 31 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In its 2014 assessment of Azerbaijan’s economy, the Standard & Poor’s rating agency maintained Azerbaijan’s stable status with GDP growth of around 5%.
Although the World Bank and the Azerbaijani government have already given their predictions for next year, the S&P assessment is important to pick over.
Its forecast was generally in line with others, including the Azerbaijani government and the World Bank.
Where it did differ was on inflation and on potential risks to this growth prediction.
Azerbaijani media reported that S&P said inflation would increase by 4.7% this year compared to 2.4% last year. It also said inflation would rise to 6% in 2015 and over 8% in 2016.
Azerbaijan’s economy is recovering from the shock of the global financial crisis and the government has been looking for an increase in inflation.
It doesn’t, though, want this much inflation.
S&P said there were also other risks to Azerbaijan’s upward economic trajectory. One of these was the high consumer lending rate.
Azerbaijan’s Central Bank has already tried to tackle this by giving increasingly stringent guidelines to its banks on lending to consumers.
S&P also made another positive, and important, observation.
It said that the proportion of savings kept in dollars was dropping as people have increased confidence in Azerbaijan’s own currency. The proportion of savings held in dollars now was around 40%. Compare this to Kazakhstan’s 70%.
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(News report from Issue No. 170, published on Feb. 5 2014)
FEB. 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The proportion of savings held in Kazakh tenge dropped to 62.6% in 2013 from 70.2% a year earlier, media quoted Kazakhstan’s Central Bank chief Kairat Kelimbetov as saying. Mr Kelimbetov said that he wanted to boost this figure and reduce the amount of savings held in US dollars.
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(News report from Issue No. 170, published on Feb. 5 2014)
JAN. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state oil fund, SOFAZ, increased by 5.1% in 2013 to $35.9b, media reported. SOFAZ is the rainy day fund that the Azerbaijani government uses to save cash for future generations. It invests in major infrastructure projects such as oil pipelines and railway tracks.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
JAN. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Evidence is mounting that Turkmenistan, like neighbouring Uzbekistan, forces people to pick its giant cotton harvests each year.
A report by the opposition Alternative Turkmenistan News (ATN) group said that school children were forced into the cotton fields each year to harvest the crop.
Attention has focused more on Uzbekistan’s use of child labour in its cotton harvest; the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) is supposed to be releasing the results of its investigation later this year into this practise.
But ATN said that the practise is also widespread across the border in Turkmenistan.
Of course, although still important, cotton is not as important to Turkmenistan’s economy as it is to Uzbekistan’s economy. Uzbekistan grows roughly three times the amount of cotton as Turkmenistan.
Even so, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has made a point of underlining how he has opened up the country and its cotton industry has been no exception. The authorities there want to build new cotton spinning plants and to increase exports of raw cotton overseas.
Perhaps the ILO should also be making plans for a trip to Turkmenistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
JAN. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Bank issued a stern warning to its domestic banks to tighten up checks they carry out on consumers before issuing loans. The Azerbaijani economy is booming but increasingly unsecured loans could derail this growth.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
JAN. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Bank ordered domestic banks to stop giving out loans to consumers so easily.
In a strongly worded statement, Azerbaijan’s Central Bank said lenders had not been doing enough due diligence on the financial security of consumers they were lending cash to.
“The Central Bank has assigned banks to intensify activities on issue of loans and enhance control over the field in line with responsible lending principles with an eye to further amplify banking sector’s financial sustainability,” the Azerbaijani Central Bank said.
The Central Bank appears to be reacting to a number of warnings from analysts who said that poorly secured loans and rising consumer debt are major risks to Azerbaijan’s economy.
Azerbaijan’s fuel-powered economy has picked up pace again since stumbling during the global economic crisis of 2008/9. In 2014, the economy is expected to grow by around 5%.
But overconfidence and slack controls threatens this economic growth. The Central Bank’s own figures showed that lending to consumers increased by nearly a third last year.
The Central Bank also appears to accuse commercial banks of aggressively selling loans to consumers and also warned them not to give out misleading information over the financial responsibilities of taking out loans.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
JAN. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The UN is the latest international agency to predict strong economic growth for Uzbekistan in 2014. In its World Economic Situation and Prospects report it said that the Uzbek economy would grow by 7.1% next year compared to 8% growth last year.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
JAN. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said Azerbaijan’s economy would grow by between 3-4% in 2014, a drop from 5.8% in 2013. In a report, the EBRD said a pre-election government spending spree in August and September had distorted and boosted Azerbaijan’s growth rates last year.
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(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)