JULY 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Competition Agency fined the country’s five largest petrol retailers $23m for price fixing. The companies fined were SOCAR Georgia Petroleum, Sun Petroleum Georgia, Rompetrol Georgia, Wissol Petroleum Georgia, and Lukoil Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Producer Price Index (PPI) measured 10.2% higher in June compared to a year earlier, Geostat reported, signalling creeping inflation. Geostat said manufacturing prices had pushed up. Georgian officials have been warning of inflation linked to the devaluation of the lari.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
SUKHUMI/Georgia, JULY 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The hilltops surrounding Sukhumi, the capital of the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia, holds a disturbing Soviet legacy.
This is where, in 1927, the Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy opened. It was the first primate-testing centre in the world. Its pioneering medical and behavioural experiments set it at the forefront of revolutionary scientific discoveries, such as the creation of a polio vaccine in 1961.
And in the frenzied years of the Space Race the institute became directly involved with the training of cosmonaut monkeys. Six of the institute’s primates made it into orbit.
Then came Perestroika and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then the Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy has become known instead as the Monkey Colony. It’s as if the monkeys have taken over the asylum.
A war between forces loyal to Georgia’s central government in Tbilisi and Abkhazian separatists took a heavy toll on the institute and its inhabitants. Scientists left, wages were simply discontinued and most of the monkeys either died of cold and malnutrition or managed to escape and try their luck in the lush Abkhaz forests.
Stories even popped up in newspapers of monkeys attacking pensioners as they scavenged for food.
Nowadays the institute’s cages have been slowly repopulated with sad-looking ill-nourished chimps and baboons. Past the decrepit entrance and surrounded by the crumbling buildings of abandoned laboratories a Soviet-era statue, a proud metal figure of a giant baboon, appears to be the only reminder of the institute’s former glory.
A bronze plaque lists the groundbreaking scientific achievements of the institutes. The count stopped in 1986.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia signed a tax agreement with the US that means US citizens living in Georgia will be liable to pay US income tax. After signing the agreement Georgian finance minister Nodar Khaduri said the deal would give Georgian banks more access to the US market.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TBILISI — Georgia accused Russia of grabbing a significant slice of its territory around the breakaway region of South Ossetia, including part of an oil pipeline owned by BP.
Signposts appeared overnight near an important motorway which crosses Georgia declaring the area to be under the control of South Ossetian forces. Armed men also started to patrol the area.
“(The) placing of these banners can be assessed as a provocation and completely unjustified move,” Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili was quoted by Georgian media as saying.
The EU, a consistent supporter of Georgia, agreed with Mr Garibashvili and released a statement on July 16 calling for the South Ossetian banners to be withdrawn.
Georgia and Russia fought a brief war in 2008 over South Ossetia which had declared de facto independence after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. After the 2008 war, Russia and a handful of other states recognised this independence.
Tension around the border zone, rugged hilly countryside dotted with farms and woods, has ebbed and flowed since then. This apparent land grab is one of the most serious, though.
It also highlights the risk of Georgia being an increasingly important part of the transit route for goods travelling between Asia and Europe.
Mr Garibashvili said that a 1.6km section of BP-operated Baku-Supsa oil pipeline now fell under rebel control.
“The pipeline is of strategic importance not only for us, but also for several other countries,” he said.
The 850km-long pipeline pumps 100,000 barrels of oil a day from fields in the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea where it is then shipped on to consumers in Europe.
Media quoted a BP spokesperson as saying that oil supplies would continue unaffected.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – China imported around 23% more Georgian wine in the first half of this year from last year, new figures showed, making it one of Georgia’s fifth most important market. Georgia’s agriculture minister, Otar Danelia, was in Beijing to meet his Chinese counterpart.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The body of the final animal missing from Tbilisi Zoo after a flood swept into it in June has been found in central Tbilisi, media reported. Salima was an Ussuri tiger. Last year she gave birth to three cubs.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECRH) in Strasbourg ruled that Russia had broken the European Convention on Human Rights in 2006 and 2007 when it detained hundreds of Georgians in Moscow and deported them. At the time, analysts said the deportations were linked to a Russia-Georgia spy row. The ECRH ruling will likely raise Georgia-Russia tension.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TBILISI – Georgia’s parliament voted 78-0 in favour of stripping control of the country’s security and intelligence agencies from the ministry of interior.
Under the reforms the interior ministry will retain control of policing in Georgia and the border guards, although its overall power will be much reduced.
The current interior ministry structure was created by former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. He pooled counterintelligence operations and border control with other law enforcement units under the interior ministry. Mr Saakashvili argued this system was more efficient. His opponents said accountability was reduced.
Nino Dolidze, a university professor at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs, explained.
“Together with the ministry of justice, it was the flagship of all Saakashvili’s reforms,” she told The Bulletin. “But it also became the place where his success started to melt and decrease.”
One of the main promises of the Georgian Dream coalition during 2012 parliamentary elections was to break down this concentration of power.
From Aug. 1 a new State Security Service will take over counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence, anti-corruption, surveillance and other special operations responsibilities. The head of the State Security Service will be selected by the government and approved by parliament for a single six-year term.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Four construction workers in Tbilisi died when part of a building they were demolishing fell on them, media reported. The former Institute for Physics and Mathematics was being demolished to make way for a hotel. The accident highlights Georgia’s poor construction safety record.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)