JUNE 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) cut its growth rate estimate for GDP in 2015 in Uzbekistan to 7% from an earlier prediction of 7.8%. The falling value of the rouble and a drop in global oil prices have hit growth rates across the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)
MAY 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s economy by the end of April was just 0.9% larger than a year earlier, the Georgian national statistics agency said. Georgia and the rest of the region are coping with the twin impact of a drop in the value of the Russian rouble and a decline in oil prices.
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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)
MAY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – With oil prices around $60-$65 per barrel, Kazakhstan’s economy will grow by 3% this year, Kairat Kelimbetov, the Kazakh Central Bank chief, told Reuters. His estimate was roughly double the estimate of the IMF.
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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MAY 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The IMF and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) both delivered withering assessments of the economies of Central Asia and the South Caucasus, piling pressure on governments across the region.
Not since the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 has the region been under such economic strain, the IMF said in its assessment.
“Exchange rate developments, such as the appreciation of the US dollar and the depreciation of the rouble, are compounding the problem,” media quoted Juha Kähkönen, deputy director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Department, as saying at the presentation of the report in Kazakhstan on May 19.
The region’s average growth rate this year, the IMF said, would slow to 3.3% from 5.3% in 2014.
A collapse in the price of oil and the value of the rouble have knocked economies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Currencies have nosedived, losing around a third of their values in only a few months, governments have scrambled to cut budgets and companies have laid off hundreds of workers.
All the data, in short, paints a turbulent portrait of the last few months and an equally troublesome outlook for the next couple of years.
Mr Kähkönen’s statement came only a few days after the EBRD had issued a similar warning at its AGM in Tbilisi. It drew attention to the sharp fall in remittances to the region from Russia and the impact this would have.
“As the Russian economy has declined, remittances from Russia to Central Asia and to eastern Europe and the Caucasus have been declining at an alarming rate,” the bank said in a statement.
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(News report from Issue No. 232, published on May 20 2015)
MAY 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The World Bank said it expects Kazakh GDP to grow by 1.3% this year, a drop of 0.5% on a previous estimate. It said growth rates would rise in 2016 to 2.8% and to 3.9% in 2017. A fall in global oil prices and a drop in the Russian rouble have hit C.Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s GDP in the first four months of 2015 was about 7% higher than for the same period in 2014, Chinara Turdu- bayeva, head of the state’s statistics committee, told media.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
BAKU, APRIL 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – – Gulnara Makhmedova, a 62-year old refugee from the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh stood in front of a crumbling Soviet apartment block tucked behind the whitewashed faculty of medicine at Baku State University.
Just a few hundred yards away luxury cars were parked up in front of haute couture shops and expensive restaurants.
Gulnara lives with five members of her family in a one-bedroom apartment. In her apartment block, electricity runs for only a few hours a day and the water that trickles out of the tap is brown.
“My family has been waiting for a new flat for over twenty years now,” she said.
Gulnara is one of around 600,000 internally displaced refugees from the conflict which pitted Azerbaijani forces against Armenian-backed separatists after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Only a fragile 1994 cease-fire now keeps Nagorno-Karabakh from falling back into war.
They live in a precarious state of destitution in Azerbaijan’s sprawling capital.
“We all hoped we could start a new life here, but we only found ourselves living in worse conditions than the ones we left behind,” she said, pointing at the disintegrating mould stained ceiling of her apartment.
“When we arrived in Baku back in 1993 we immediately understood we were not welcome here as we represented a living reminder of Azerbaijan’s defeat,” she told the Bulletin referring to the thousands of civilians who fled Agdam, her hometown after an Armenian defeat of Azerbaijan.
Analysts have said that there may be another reason why Gulnara and her family are made to live in broken Soviet apartment blocks. It may suit Azerbaijani president Ilham ALiyev and his government to be able to show domestic television and visiting dignitaries the human suffering that the smouldering Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has generated.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
MARCH 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) sent a warning to all Central Asian economies, and in particular to Tajikistan, in its Asian Development Outlook report.
Landlocked and dependent on remittances from migrant workers, Tajikistan is particularly vulnerable to the present economic crisis, the ADB said.
The ADB said Tajikistan is expected to experience a deceleration in its GDP growth. This had averaged 9% between 2010-14 but will fall to 5%.
“The decline in remittances and the traditional exports of aluminum and cotton slowed growth in 2014 and inflation worsened to 6.1%,” it said.
The ADB is also expecting rampant inflation and a further devaluation of the somoni currency by 6.5%.
Remittances, mostly from Tajik workers in Russia, represent roughly half of its GDP. The rouble crisis has affected both the value of those transfers and the capacity of these workers to retain their jobs. The ADB also said that new legislation for migrant workers in Russia will hit Tajikistan’s earnings.
“Remittances will likely contract further in 2015 as new regulations require that migrants to the Russian Federation have Russian language proficiency, as well as medical tests and health insurance that are estimated to cost about $500 per Tajik migrant,” it said.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
MARCH 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Officially, Georgia’s economy grew by 4.8% in 2014, up from 3.3% in 2013, the Georgian national statistics office said. Georgia has been enjoying growth for a few years. Economists have predicted a slowdown, though, because of a regional economic trough.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 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)