APRIL 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan has doubled its foreign trade figures in the first quarter of the year compared to the same period in 2012, media quoted the Turkmen ministry of economy as saying. Since becoming president in 2007, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has pushed to increase the country’s client base for its huge gas supplies.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian PM Dmitri Medvedev welcomed Kyrgyzstan’s drive to join the Russia-led Customs Union, which already includes Kazakhstan and Belarus, but said the Kyrgyz government still needed to sign a number of documents. Mr Medvedev was talking to press after meeting Kyrgyz economy minister Temir Sariyev in Moscow.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — SOFAZ, Azerbaijan’s sovereign wealth fund, aims to spend $1b on property in Australia and Asia this year as it diversifies away from Europe, Shakhmar Movsumov, a senior director, told Reuters. SOFAZ made a splash in the international property market in December when it spent $600m in London, Paris and Moscow.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Underlining China’s increased dominance across the Central Asia and South Caucasus region, a senior Chinese economic official said that trade with Azerbaijan increased by 17.6% in 2012. Zhang Wei, chairman of China’s Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said that China-Azerbaijan trade was worth $1.2b in 2012.
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(News report from Issue No. 132, published on April 22 2013)
APRIL 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s economy grew by 3.1% in the first three months of the year compared to the same period in 2012, Reuters quoted official data as showing. This rate is far quicker than the first quarter of 2012. Most of the growth occurred outside the energy sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 132, published on April 22 2013)
APRIL 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Perhaps wary of potential civil strife, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev called on his government to try to spread Kazakhstan’s increasing wealth more evenly.
Signs of inequalities in Kazakhstan are not hard to find. In Almaty, the latest Western SUV competes for road space with battered and rusting second-hand cars. Street vendors sell shashlik, barbequed meat on skewers, for a few tenge across the street from restaurants charging hundreds of dollars for dishes cooked by a French chef.
And these inequalities are potentially dangerous, as a demonstration in the western town of Zhanaozen on Dec. 14 2011 that ended with the death of at least 14 protesters showed. The Kazakh government blamed inequality and a lack of job opportunities for the demonstration.
Now Mr Nazarbayev has said that more can be done. Specifically, he said that roughly 8% of families in Kazakhstan lived off $100 per person per month. According to the World Bank, which measures inequality using the Gini coefficient, Kazakhstan has a sizeable inequality gap. That gap, though, is slowly reducing.
The Gini coefficient measures inequality using a score of zero to 100, zero being perfectly equal. The latest data on the World Bank’s website showed that Kazakhstan scored 29 in 2009, down from 33.9 in 2003. This compares favourably with its neighbours and is lower than many European countries.
Still, as Mr Nazarbayev knows, perception is ever important.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 12 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Remittances to Kyrgyzstan from workers living mainly in Russia jumped by 23% in the first two months of the year compared to the same period in 2012, local media quoted the Kyrgyz Central Bank as saying. Like neighbouring Tajikistan, remittances are a vital part of Kyrgyzstan’s economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan has attracted 80% of all foreign direct investment in Central Asia since 1993, media in Baku quoted Kazakh first deputy PM Bakytzhan Sagintayev as saying at a conference.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan started the sale of its second largest gold deposit, Jerooy, despite a $400m arbitration case levied by Kazakh investors
Visor Capital, Reuters reported. The Kyrgyz authorities tore up the previous sale of Jerooy after a revolution in 2010. Investors have become increasingly wary of Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 130, published on April 5 2013)
APRIL 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkish Airlines cancelled its first flight to Armenia, a transport link that had been designed to ease tension between the two neighbours. Turkish Airlines had been due to fly twice weekly from Van in eastern Turkey to Yerevan. Azerbaijan, still officially at war with Armenia, persuaded Turkey, its long-term ally, to scrap the flights.
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(News report from Issue No. 130, published on April 5 2013)