Tag Archives: government

Saakashvili’s United National Movement party splits up in Georgia

TBILISI, JAN. 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Three months after a humiliating parliamentary election defeat the once mighty United National Movement party (UNM) appears to be in its final death throes.

Putting an end to months of speculation, 21 MPs from the UNM said that they were breaking away to form a new party.

Gigi Ugulava, the MPs’ unofficial leader, said the UNM was too heavily tarnished by its links to former president Mikheil Saakahsvili.

“One person is responsible for dismantling the party, the person, who established the party,” media quoted him as saying, referring to Mr Saakashvili.

Mr Ugulava is an ex-mayor of Tbilisi. He was only released from prison a week earlier, where he had been serving a sentence for bribe-taking.

At a parliamentary election, UNM won just 27 seats of 150 seats, down from 65 seats in the 2012 election. Its great rivals, the Georgian Dream won 115 seats, up from 85.

Mr Saakashvili, Georgian president from 2004 until 2013 who counted George W. Bush as a friend, has been living in exile since leaving office in 2013. He had been hoping that a UNM victory at the election would allow him to return to Georgia.

He responded to the breakup of the party from his base in Ukraine in his usual bombastic fashion.

“Everyone saw the amount of defectors today and everyone will see the strength and the amount of the United National Movement at its January 20 congress,” he said on Facebook.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)

Kazakh President reshuffles government

DEC. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked economy minister Kuandyk Bishimbayev and foreign minister in a government reshuffle. He promoted 38- year-old Timur Suleimenov to take over the ministry. Previously,Mr Suleimenov had been a board member of the Eurasian Economic Commission, the civil service of the Eurasian Economic Union.Mr Bishimbayev had only been in the post since May. In the reshuffle,Mr Nazarbayev also moved foreign minister Erlan Idrissov, considered to be one of the most experienced Kazakh diplomats, to be the ambassador to Britain, a position he has previously held. His replacement is Kairat Abdrakhmanov, who had been Kazakhstan’s representative to the UN.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 311, published on Jan. 6 2017)

Georgia increases tax on cigarettes, imported cars and petrol

TBILISI, DEC. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s Parliament has passed a bill that will increase tax on tobacco, imported cars and oil products, media reported, price rises that have irritated people already coping with a drop in economic conditions.

MPs endorsed the long-trailed tax rises when the Georgian Dream coalition government presented its 2017 budget. The extra revenue raised will help fill a gap in the government’s budget created by reforms to corporate income tax which the government approved in May. From Jan. 1 2017, tax on undistributed profits, both reinvested or retained, will be abolished, creating a 500m Lari ($178m) gap in the state budget.

The government hopes that the reduced corporation tax burden will boost foreign direct investment, an important part of the economy. The opposition, though, said the tax rises would add extra burden on families.

Zurab Chiaberashvili, a senior MP in the United National Movement said: “We have offered the government an alternative plan that would cut costs. We are trying to persuade them that their plan would impoverish hundreds of thousands of people.”

Different criteria will determine the tax increase rate for each category. The type of oil product, the age of the vehicle and type of cigarettes, filtered or unfiltered, will be the main determiners.

An extra tax for car owners, whose family’s combined income exceeds 40,000 Lari ($14,600), will be introduced.

Taxes on gambling, both real and online, will be increased too.

Zurab, a 32-year-old Tbilisi resident who owns a wine shop said the tax rises would be a problem. “The rise in the price of oil products will lead to higher prices in all sectors and people pay the consequences,” she said.

“However, our country is full of polluting and inefficient old cars. Maybe the move will push people to buy new cars in order to pay less taxes.”

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(News report from Issue No. 310, published on Dec. 23 2016)

Azerbaijani government cuts spending

DEC. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s parliament passed a government budget for 2017 which cut spending to 16.9m manat from 18.5m manat in 2016. Azerbaijan has had to slash its spending because of a sharp fall in the price of oil which has hit government revenues hard. Oil revenues make up 75% of the government’s income. It based its 2017 budget on oil at $40/barrel.

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(News report from Issue No. 310, published on Dec. 23 2016)

Kyrgyzstan scraps tourist registration requirements

BISHKEK, DEC. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan cancelled the reintroduction of a law that required all tourists to register with an interior ministry unit within five days of arriving in the country.

The law had proved unpopular with tourists, who didn’t understand the system and felt vulnerable to extortion, and also with businesses whose revenues had been hit.

Kyrgyzstan reintroduced the rule on Nov. 5 but never properly explained why. It was also seen as a step backwards for Kyrgyzstan which had scrapped tourist visas in 2012.

In a direct plea to the government, tourism leaders in the Karakol region of east Kyrgyzstan, popular for skiing and hiking, posted a video explaining the impact on their businesses.

“Tourism in Karakol is one of the main economic activities of the city, owing to which we live and eat,” Jamilya, 29, a owner of local cafe said in the video. “Your law on registration is the absolute opposite to the development of Kyrgyzstan and development of tourism and I ask you to hear the voice of the people and cancel the registration.”

Kyrgyzstan, which is short on natural resources but is renowned for its Alpine scenery, has tried to market itself as an adventure tourism destination. Tourism now accounts for nearly 5% of the country’s GDP.

Azamat Aitbaev, a member of Karakol city parliament and the initiator of the video messages told The Conway Bulletin that tourist numbers were down 70-80% compared to last year.

“December is the most active month in winter tourism, and we have already lost it because of this mandatory registration,” he said.

Under the reinstated rules citizens of Western countries will be able to stay in Kyrgyzstan for 30 days without registering and citizens of other FSU states, and countries with special bilateral agreements, will be able to stay in Kyrgyzstan for up to 90 days without registering.

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(News report from Issue No. 310, published on Dec. 23 2016)

Mirziyoyev swears in as Uzbekistan’s second post-Soviet president

DEC. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Shavkat Mirizoyev was formally sworn in as Uzbekistan’s second post- Soviet president.

At his swearing-in ceremony, Mr Mirizyoyev promised to continue along the path that had been set by his predecessor Islam Karimov.

“Today, as I assume the post of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, I comprehensively and deeply feel and realise as a head of state the very enormous responsibility on my shoulders,” he said according to his press office. “And (I promise) to continue the work of the great state and political figure, our dear teacher Islam Karimov.”

Although he has pledged to follow a course set by Karimov, Mr Mirizoyev has already worked to open up the country, making peace deals with neighbours, granting visa-free entrance to foreign nationals and promising to liberalise Uzbekistan’s strict currency rules.

Mr Mirziyoyev also announced key positions in his cabinet including promoting Abdulla Aripov, his ally, as PM and demoting Rustam Azimov who had been finance minister. Mr Azimov’s demotion took analysts by surprise as he had been seen as one of the key ministers now running the country. By contrast, Mr Aripov had been sacked by Karimov in 2012 and only reinstated to the cabinet after he died in September.

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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)

Kazakh state cuts petrol controls

NOV. 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government said that it would ditch price controls of AI-80 grade petrol from 2017. The move is inline with a policy developed last year. It ditched price controls of AI-92 and AI-94 in September 2015 shortly after a sharp devaluation in the Kazakh tenge. The tenge had taken a nosedive after a peg to the US dollar was scrapped, putting the government’s price controls under major pressure.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Kyrgyz opposition threatens President

NOV. 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Omurbek Tekebayev, one of the opposition figures in Kyrgyzstan being investigated for allegedly setting up offshore accounts in Kyrgyzstan, said that he had started collecting signatures to impeach president Almazbek Atambayev. Mr Tekebayev is a member so the Ata Meken party which walked out of a government coalition in October over Mr Atambayev’s plans to hold a referendum in December that would extend the powers of the PM.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Turkmen President’s son wins parliamentary seat

NOV. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The son of Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Serdar Berdymukhamedov, has won a seat in the country’s parliament, local television reported, a possible first step towards inheriting the presidency from his father.

Turkmen TV broadcast Serdar Berdymukhamedov being congratulated after winning a by-election three days earlier. He had previously worked in a senior management position in the foreign ministry.

Little is known about Serdar Berdymukhamedov. Eurasianet ran a story earlier this year which said that as well as holding down government jobs he also owns a “a cotton-spinning plant, a mineral water factory and a chain of hotels”.

Earlier this year, Mr Berdymukhamedov tweaked the country’s constitution so that he could remain in power for life. He also extended the length of presidential terms to seven years from five years.

Succession has become an enduring issue in Central Asia. In September, Islam Karimov, who had ruled Uzbekistan for 25 years died. His daughter had been his preferred successor but was sidelined two years ago, paving the way for PM Shavkat Mirziyoyev to take over. In Kazakhstan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev dodged the issue of a family succession during an interview with Bloomberg this week.

Mr Berdymukhamedov took over in 2007 as Turkmenistan’s president from Saparmurat Niyazov. The only country in the region which has successfully completed a power handover within a family is in Azerbaijan, where Ilham Aliyev became president in 2003 after his father Heydar.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Kazakh police arrests senior officials

NOV. 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The deputy head of the government’s Baiterek development corporation, Aslan Jakupov, was arrested with two other people for taking bribe of a around $80,000 over a house-building contract in Pavlodar, media reported. Media said that Aslan Jakupov is the son of a senior Kazakh MP. The case shows just how ingrained corruption is in Kazakhstan. The prosecutor said that Mr Jakupov was suspected of taking a series of bribes from construction companies in deals across the country.

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(News report from Issue No. 305, published on Nov. 18 2016)