Tag Archives: Georgia

COMMENT: Governments will be judged on how they deal with the coronavirus

MARCH 26 (The Bulletin) — With the global impact and disruption of Covid-19 becoming apparent, it is time to see what the governments of Central Asia and the South Caucasus are made of. Their responses now will forge their reputations. They will be judged.

And, so far, reactions have been wildly different.

Turkmenistan and Tajikistan appear to be pretending that the Covid-19 pandemic is not happening. Neither country has reported cases and in Tajikistan people are being encouraged to continue with their lives as normal. Last weekend thousands of people gathered to celebrate the Persian New Year and President Emomali Rakhmon has barely broken with his official engagements. In Ashgabat, President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has talked up herbal remedies to the pandemic.

Berdymukhamedov and Rakhmon may be the Central Asian versions of Nero. While Rome burnt for a week in 64AD, Emperor Nero fiddled, or at least that is the popular perception.

Elsewhere the reaction of governments to the Covid-19 pandemic has been more mainstream. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Armenia have all ordered lockdowns over their main cities and announced economic packages that will support business. Kyrgyzstan has applied to the IMF to help dampen its own Covid-19 epidemic which appears linked to people in the more religious and conservative south of the country returning home from the Hajj in Saudi Arabia.

In Azerbaijan, the approach has veered away from the orthodoxy, as it often does. Instead of offering the government grants and loans favoured by other countries to keep business running and to buy extra supplies and resources for its health service, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev set up a special fund that would accept donations from companies, government agencies and the wealthy.

Never one to miss an opportunity to self-promote, top billing on the website currently goes to Aliyev and his wife, Mehriban, who is also the vice-president, for donating their salaries for 2020 to the fund. The website doesn’t say how large these donations were.

Covid-19 will shrink growth rates and possibly even economies across the region. The people of Central Asia and the South Caucasus are used to big, interventionist and, some would say, authoritarian government. Now these leaders have the opportunity to show their people that this power can be used to good effect in a national emergency.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Georgia says that it has 77 cases of the coronavirus

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MARCH 26 (The Bulletin) — Georgian health officials said on Thursday that 77 people had been confirmed as Covid-19 positive. It has declared a state-of-emergency, placed movement restrictions in Tbilisi and other towns and ordered schools to close.

The Georgian Orthodox Church has been criticised for encouraging people to come to mass despite worries that it will spread the disease. It also sent priests out onto the street to bless cities.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Coronavirus spreads through Central Asia and South Caucasus

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YEREVAN/March 26 (The Bulletin) — The Covid-19 virus started to take a grip of the Central Asia and South Caucasus region with only Tajikistan and Turkmenistan not reporting any outbreaks.

Worst hit, by some margin, has been Armenia with 290 cases reported by March 26. Officials said that the source of the outbreak was a sewing factory in Yerevan and people arriving from Iran, which has had one of the worst outbreaks in the world.

From sounding blase about the impact of the coronavirus only two weeks ago, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan has now ordered a lockdown along the same lines as European countries, which is hitting businesses.

“Let’s look at the upcoming week as a unique opportunity to read, self-reflect and plan the future of the Armenian nation,” he said.

Neighbouring Georgia and Azerbaijan have also reported cases of the coronavirus, 77 cases and 80 cases each, but have taken different approaches to dealing with it. The Georgian government has imposed a lockdown in Tbilisi but in Azerbaijan the rules are more relaxed.

In Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have imposed lockdowns over their largest cities to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus, although Turkmen and Tajik officials have insisted, much to the amazement of many analysts, that they haven’t had any cases.

On March 21, Tajik towns hosted the traditional celebrations to mark the Persian new year Nowruz festival and Turkmen leader Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has talked up the medicinal benefits of various herbs against the coronavirus.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

MARKETS: Coronavirus crashes currencies

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MARCH 26 (The Bulletin) — Currencies across the region crashed to their lowest levels as the full extent of the threat of the coronavirus to the world’s economic system became apparent, the US dollar strengthened and governments in Central Asia and the South Caucasus began to fret whether they would be able to deal with a major health crisis.

The Kazakh tenge was trading down 13% at 447.8/$1, off a low of 456/$1. It follows the price of oil and the Russian rouble closely and with both bouncing around at lows, the tenge was always going to get dragged down. It has never been this low and before the oil price collapse of 2014 was valued at around 188/$1.

The Georgian lari fell by more than 15% to 3.3387/$1, also an all-time low. The currency has been weak for more than a year but policymakers had thought it was beginning to strengthen before the impact of the coronavirus turned it onto a downward trajectory.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Coronavirus smashes in the region’s currencies

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TBILISI/March 26 (The Bulletin) — Currencies plunged across Central Asia and the South Caucasus because of the combined impact of the Covid-19 virus, a collapse in oil prices and a surge in the value of the US dollar.

Central Banks raced to pump money into their systems and sell off foreign currency assets to prop up the value of their currencies as the impact of the pandemic on business and economies across the globe became apparent.

In the past couple of weeks the region’s two most-traded currencies, the Kazakh tenge and the Georgian lari, have lost around 20% of their value.

Airlines have stopped flying into the region, land borders have closed and projects and foreign direct investment that had been pledged have been put on hold.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Coronavirus forces Georgia’s tourist industry to close

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TBILISI/March 26 (The Bulletin) — The spread of the coronavirus has forced Georgia’s tourism industry, a source of pride and economic strength over the past half a decade, to shut down. Businesses linked to the sector said that it may take years to rebuild.

Irakli Areshidze, a bar owner in Tbilisi, told a correspondent for The Bulletin that he had had to leave debts unpaid and abandon his business for now.

“It’s a very difficult situation,” he said. “We had to pay for the February expenses with the March income, but the March income was so low we needed to use the savings.”

The Georgian tourism sector has been marketed heavily in Europe and the Middle East. For Arabs it is an escape from the heat, for Europeans it is an exotic bridge towards the former Soviet Union.

Lika Jguburia has been working as a guide. He said that all the tour reservations until October have been cancelled.

“To lose a job and a major source of income is simply awful,” he said. “And it has happened so quickly.”

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Azerbaijan releases journalist abducted in Tbilisi

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MARCH 17 (The Bulletin) — Afqan Muxtarli, an Azerbaijani investigative journalist who was kidnapped from Tbilisi in 2017 where he had been living in exile and handed over to police in Azerbaijan, was unexpectedly freed from prison in Baku (March 17). Mr Muxtarli, who was convicted of smuggling and illegally crossing the Azerbaijani-Georgian border and sent to prison for six years, always maintained that he was targeted because of his journalism. He had fled Azerbaijan in 2014 because he said that he was warned that he would be arrested. Human rights activists accused the Georgian authorities of colluding in the abduction of Mr Muxtarli.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia report coronavirus infections

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TBILISI/March 2 2020 (The Bulletin) — Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia all declared their first cases of the coronavirus Covid-19 and closed their borders with Iran, a hotbed of the disease.

In Central Asia, governments blocked entry to countries that they considered high-risk and cut flights to China in a desperate attempt to keep out the coronavirus that has spread around the world from its origin in the city of Wuhan.

All the confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the South Caucasus appear to have been linked with Iran. Borders between Iran and Armenia and Azerbaijan have become increasingly porous over the past few years as trade and relations improved.

Governments in the South Caucasus appealed to the public not to panic. In an Instagram message, Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili stood on a commuter bus wearing a facemask. She appeared to be the only person wearing a mask.

“Let’s spread #SafetynotFear!” she wrote. “We need to show people that safety means remaining calm and being responsible.”

In Armenia, PM Nikol Pashinyan was more dismissive of the threat from the virus, saying that flu was a bigger killer. He also said that the health services were on top of the situation in Armenia, although there was a “shortage of masks”.

Central Asian countries have not reported any cases of the coronavirus, although analysts said that this may be because officials were not keen on reporting them or that health officials had failed to spot them.

And governments continued to try to incubate against the disease. Kazakhstan cut the number of flights to China and South Korea and stopped issuing visas to Chinese.

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— This story was first published in issue 438 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Georgia’s economy grew 5.1% in 2019

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FEB. 28 2020 (The Bulletin) — Georgia’s economy grew by 5.1% in the year to the end of January, data from the government showed. This is up from 3.5% growth recorded a year ago and shows that the strong Georgian economic growth is set to continue. The data was recorded, though, before the spread of the coronavirus out of China started hitting economies.
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— This story was first published in issue 438 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Georgian Capital buys up renewable energy

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TBILISI/Feb. 27 2020 (The Bulletin) — — Georgian Capital, the conglomerate that owns most of Georgia Healthcare, schools around Tbilisi, a property development company and a beer producer, said that it had returned to profit in 2019 after reporting a loss in 2018. The London-listed company also said that it was buying the 34% of Georgian Renewable Power Company that it didn’t already own from RP Global for $13.8m. This may rise by up to $4.5m if electricity price rise in 2023-5.

The Georgian Renewable Power Company owns wind farms and hydropower stations.

Georgia Capital chairman and CEO Irakli Gilauri said of the deal: “The minority acquisition gives us greater flexibility to execute our planned growth strategy to become a key player in the fast-growing Georgian electricity market.” Georgia has been emphasising green power.

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— This story was first published in issue 438 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin