APRIL 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Exports of agricultural products from Kazakhstan increased by 33% in 2015, Yeremek Kosherbayev, vice minister of agriculture said. Media didn’t report his reasons for the sharp increase but Kazakhstan has been investing heavily in boosting its efficiency in agriculture. One of its biggest exports, now, is wheat.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)
APRIL 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – People in Uzbekistan will find it harder to pay both their utility bills and bus fares from this month.
The government has ordered price increases across the board from April 1, signalling latent inflation in its economy.
Utility prices went up around 8.5% but bus prices have risen by 20% and this is going to be significant. Public transport in Tashkent delivers several hundreds thousand passenger journeys every day, making bus ticket prices a highly sensitive issue.
The city government blamed high fuel prices for the new ticket price of 1,200 sum ($0.41 at the official rate).
Officially, the Uzbek sum has lost only 10% of its value over the past six months against the US dollar, but Black Market rates tell a different story.
The Uzbek currency is spiralling downwards and this will push up inflation. Accurate economic data is hard to come by from Uzbekistan but there is no arguing with the higher bus prices. This is the accurate inflation measure that is needed to gauge price rises in Uzbekistan.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(Editorial from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)
APRIL 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz PM Temir Sariyev told Parliament that FDI in Kyrgyzstan grew by 12.6% to $818.8m in 2015 compared to the previous year. FDI from countries in the Former Soviet Union grew more slowly at 2.8%, due to the economic crisis that has hit the region. FDI from the UK increased by 3.5 times to $190m. FDI from China halved.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)
APRIL 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In March, consumer prices continued to increase in Kazakhstan, according to the National Statistics Committee. Inflation stood at 0.5% in March alone and the annualised level now stands at 15.7%, its highest since 2009. Analysts have said that inflation in Kazakhstan will continue to climb.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)
APRIL 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Foreign direct investment in Azerbaijan dropped 6.3% last year to $7.5b, media quoted data from the government’s statistic committee as saying. The statistics add more evidence, although it is barely needed, of the sharp economic downturn that Azerbaijan, and other countries in the region, has had to deal with.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)
APRIL 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Inflation in Georgia is slowing, figures from the Georgian Statistics Committee revealed. In March, prices grew by only 0.3%. Annualised inflation fell to 4.1% from 5.6% the previous month. An 18.7% year-on-year increase in medical products prices was the main component of inflation.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)
APRIL 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Central Banks in Central Asia are boasting about de-dollarisation these days, painting a rosy picture of their success in combating their economies’ dependence on the greenback.
A closer look at the stats, however, reveals that a combination of heavy interventions in the currency markets and interest rate tweaking were the main drivers of healthier Kazakh tenge and Kyrgyz som.
But now Central Banks have to grapple with inflation, which continues to grow, and demand for credit, which continues to shrink.
Central Banks propped up local currencies, against a US dollar that has now slowed its rise against Emerging Markets currencies and commodities.
Restrictions on exchange points, bans on pricing goods in dollars and public calls for confidence have all contributed to curbing the use of dollars.
But Central Banks might have run out of options now and they need to steer away from “crisis mode” if they want to really restore confidence in their still ailing currencies.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(Editorial from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)
APRIL 2 2016, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan banned labelling goods for sale in anything other than Kyrgyz som, a move it said would help strengthen the national currency and reduce its economy’s reliance on US dollars.
Since a crash in the value of local currencies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus last year, de-dollarisation has become a buzzword among Central Banks.
In Kyrgyzstan, the authorities have concentrated on persuading more people to use som over US dollars to buy goods. And this now includes banning shopkeepers from pricing goods in US dollars.
The punishment for pricing goods in US dollars still hasn’t been announced but it will be a challenge to the authorities to impose the ban successfully.
Zhumakadyr Akeneyev, a former head of oil traders association and now an economic commentator, said de-dollarisation was a positive step.
“Finally, for the first time since independence, we have turned our face to the national currency,” he said.
Other Kyrgyz said that while they broadly welcomed the move, they were also sceptical that it would work.
“I like this idea. Many people, who borrowed money from the banks in foreign currencies, suffered from devaluation of som,” said 25-year-old Saltanat. “However, I think the government should leave some space for use of foreign currencies too.”
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)
APRIL 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The cost of public transport in Uzbekistan, which is run by the state, rose 20% on April 1, various opposition websites reported. The price increase is more evidence of inflationary pressure building in the Uzbek economy. Utility prices have also risen recently and information leaking out of Uzbekistan has suggested that the value of the Uzbek sum currency on the Black Market has fallen.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)
APRIL 5 2016, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhs have increased the amount of tenge they are keeping in bank accounts, suggesting that they now trust the currency once again despite it halving in value over the past seven months, Kazakhstan’s Central Bank said.
In February, Central Bank data showed that the amount of tenge saved in banks rose to 1.53 trillion tenge ($4.5b), up 5% from January. Significantly, too, the proportion of tenge as savings grew to 22% of the total, up from 20% in January.
Analysts said that two factors had contributed to this renewed confidence in the tenge. The first was that this year, the tenge has actually strengthened against the US dollar to around 340/$1 compared to an all- time low in mid-January of 390/$1.
In March, Kazakhstan’s Central Bank heavily intervened in the currency market, buying $1.2b on the Kazakh Stock Exchange, around 2.6 times more than it bought in February.
This, together with high liquidity ensured by capital held at the Single Pension Fund, helped to improve the tenge’s position, analysts said.
“The Central Bank now faces the problem of too much liquidity and too high interest rates,” Askar Akhmedov, senior analyst at Halyk Finance, part of one of the largest Kazakh banks, said in a report.
Secondly, analysts said the Central Bank’s policy of increasing interest rates on tenge savings in banks to 14% from 10%, in addition to dropping the interest paid on foreign currency savings to 2% from 3% was working.
On the streets of Almaty this more positive view of the tenge was, generally, reflected.
A pensioner said: “It is our national currency, and I trust it but the 50% drop in its value was unpleasant, especially for pensioners.”
Most people that the Bulletin’s correspondent in Almaty spoke to agreed, and it will be a relief to President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the Kazakh government that confidence in the tenge is returning after a torrid 2015.
There were some who took a more cautious approach, though.
“Nowadays the position of the tenge is unsteady and it may weaken again. If I had to choose between tenge and dollar to put money in deposit, I’d probably choose dollar,” said Aigerim, a music teacher.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)