Tag Archives: government

Kazakh President agrees pension reform

JUNE 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – It looks as if Kazakhstan has gently reformed its state pension plan without creating too much of a fuss.

Reform of the generous Soviet-era pension scheme is a particularly thorny issue across the former Soviet Union. Armenia’s government resigned in April because of protests against its proposed changes to the pension scheme and last year in Kazakhstan, a minister resigned after suggesting that women should work for as long as men.

Now though, it looks as if the Kazakh government has gently pushed through the changes it needs to make.

State media reported that President Nursultan Nazarbayev had signed into law a plan to modernise pensions.

The basic premise of the new pension plan, which won’t come into effect until 2016, is that employers will pay the equivalent of 5% of their employees’ salaries to the government. This, media said, will be used by the government to cover a current shortfall in the pension scheme.

So, in total, Kazakh workers will from 2016 effectively contribute the equivalent of 15% of their salary to the government’s pension pot. Employees will pay 10% and companies another 5%.

As the increased pension contribution comes from companies, rather than from workers, it’s unlikely to trigger public protests. Analysts, though, have said that the pension hole has become so big that the Kazakh government may also decide to increase direct employee contributions. That may cause trouble.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 190, published on July 2 2014)

Kazakh Air Astana plans IPO

JUNE 26 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Air Astana will aim for an IPO within three years, Peter Foster, its CEO, said, according to media. Samruk-Kazyna, the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund owns 51% of Air Astana and BAE Systems (formerly British Aerospace) owns 49%. The Kazakh government has been looking to privatise various companies it owns.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 190, published on July 2 2014)

Tajikistan arrests researcher

JUNE 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajik officials arrested Alexander Sodiqov, a 31-year old Tajik academic affiliated to the University of Toronto in Canada, and accused him of spying.

Mr Sodiqov was carrying out research in the Tajikistan’s restive Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO) when Tajik security agents detained him.

Tajik officials are traditionally jittery about anyone asking awkward questions in GBAO, where Dushanbe’s authority is weak. Badakhshanis fought against government forces during a five-year civil war in the mid-1990s that President Emomali Rakhmon, eventually won.

Ever since, though, peace has been fragile. In July 2012, around 50 people died in fighting when the authorities tried to arrest a local chief who they accused of drug trafficking. Earlier this year more violence killed three people in Khorog, the regional capital and the scene of Mr Sodiqov.

Human rights groups and the British and Canadian governments have all said they are concerned about Mr Sodiqov’s well-being.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)

Tajikistan blocks YouTube,Facebook

JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Tajikistan have blocked access to both YouTube and Facebook, betraying their fear of the web.

With Tajikistan’s major internet providers offering inconsistent explanations for the connection breakdown, many people reached the conclusion that the state’s communications service is behind the block.

It’s a tactic they have used previously.

Tajikistan blocked YouTube when violence broke out in the eastern province of Gorno-Badakshan in 2012, and again last year when a clip of President Emomali Rakhmon singing drunk at his son’s wedding went viral.

Umrana, 23, a Tajik blogger now living in Bishkek said that despite internet penetration of less than 10% in Tajikistan, its appeal to the aspirational middle class is what worries the government most.

“There is a legend that an Austria-Hungarian Emperor wouldn’t allow construction of railroads because he thought it would transport the French revolution. Our emperors are the same,” he said. “When they think of YouTube, they think of movement, unrest, threats.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)

Georgian Dream wins regional election

JUNE 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – It looks as if Georgia’s ruling party Georgian Dream has completed its clean sweep and defeated former President Mikheil Saakashvilil’s United National Movement (UNM) party in local elections.

Official results have not yet been published from Sunday’s local election but preliminary figures put Georgian dream ahead in most regions.

Overall, victory for Georgian Dream appears emphatic, pulling in 50.8% of the national vote compared to the UMN’s 22.4%, according to the election commission.

Georgian Dream is the party of Georgia’s richest man Bidzina Ivanishvili. It surged to power two years ago in a remarkable parliamentary election in which it defeated a seemingly indomitable UNM.

Last year, Georgian Dream also won a presidential election, propelling Giorgi Margvelashvili to power, and now victory in local governments completes its domination.

The UNM complained that irregularities had tarnished the election but European observers passed it as a legitimate expression of the popular will.

In Tbilisi, the Georgian Dream mayoral candidate will have to compete in a second round vote, but only because he failed, just, to take more than 50% of the votes.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)

Police shot at in Armenia

JUNE 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A supporter of Armenia’s nationalist party Tsegakron opened fire at police with an air pistol outside a courthouse in Yerevan where the party’s leader was standing trial, media reported. The leader of Tsegakron, Shant Harutiunian, was arrested in November after clashes with police.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)

Armenia’s government suggests pension reforms

JUNE 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The thorny issue of pension reform returned to centre stage in Armenia after the new government submitted a proposal that watered down unpopular reforms.

Earlier this year Armenia’s government resigned over the unpopularity of its changes to the pension system which came into effect on Jan. 1. The new law stated that people born after 1973 pay 5% of their salaries into a government scheme, a sum matched by the government.

Thousands of people demonstrated against this plan and the Constitutional Court eventually deemed it illegal and demanded that the new law was amended by Sept. 30.

Armenia was effectively plunged into a political crisis — and the issue of how to reform the out-of-date pension system was still unresolved.

Now the new government of Hovik Abrahamyan is trying to tackle the problem.

It has proposed that the scheme would only be obligatory for public servants who will also have their salaries raised from July 1. It’s a brave proposal and one that may gain traction. Like other states across the former Soviet Union, Armenia needs to reform its overly-generous state pension scheme and also avoid major public discontent.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)

Lunch with a Kyrgyz MP

BISHKEK/Kyrgyzstan, JUNE 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Dressed in a colourful striped shirt Narynbek Moldobayev is on first name terms with all the staff at this Italian restaurant in central Bishkek.

Moldobayev is the archetypal Kyrgyz MP and rather charming with it. Having moved seamlessly between three political parties in the last five years, his politics can be described as fluid — a common characteristic in Kyrgyzstan.

And it is this fluidity amongst the Kyrgyzstan’s political class, that’s important to examine as it is undermining, many say, Central Asia’s first parliamentary democracy.

An MP who supported former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, ousted in a revolution in 2010, Moldobayev is now part of an opposition group that split from the nationalist Ata-Jurt party.

“I was never a nationalist,” he said as he tucked into a bowl of salad.

Moldobayev is 60-years-old and sentimental about the Soviet Union. He praises Russia unreservedly but is suspicious of China and its “desire to influence” the Central Asian energy sphere.

Moldobayev, primarily a businessman who made his money in the construction and oil industries, seems unbothered by the values of the party whose list he has paid his way to be on through donations. “Kyrgyz politics is built on personal gripes,” he said wearily, explaining why some parties in the parliament have effectively disintegrated.

Many say Kyrgyzstan’s political system might be more representative if it ditched party lists in favour of geographic constituencies. In the parliamentary vote in 2010 five parties took less than 40% of the vote creating a fractious, and many argue weaker, parliament. Moldobayev disagrees with this viewpoint, citing potential for “dangerous localism”.

There may be another reason, though. Since few people actually know who Moldobayev is and he might not win a seat.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)

Ex-spy made Kyrgyz gold chief

JUNE 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The appointment of Tokon Mamytov, a former spy, as head of Kyrgyz state gold mining champion Kygyzaltyn could be good news for investors.

Kyrgyzaltyn acts as the government’s representative in partnerships with Canadian Centerra Gold, operator of the country’s major gold mine, Kumtor, and a number of other Joint Stock mining projects including Altynken (Chui province) and Makmal (Jalal-Abad province).

Starting out in the Soviet-era KGB, Mr Mamytov has spent his adult life in security and defence postings, a background some argue doesn’t qualify him to run a mining company.

But others see Mr Mamytov’s appointment as signal that change is coming.

Kubat Rahimov, a local economist, said Mr Mamytov’s background in the security services, was a good thing as Kyrgyzaltyn’s previous leaders were young western-educated types that “played by Asian rules”. This was a thinly veiled reference to corruption.

Mr Mamytov will not have full control over the sector — licenses are issued via the State Agency of Geology and Mineral Resources — but the position makes him the government’s man on the ground across projects accounting for 97% of the country’s gold production.

Mr Mamytov will need to draw on experience from his last post — managing conflict on the Kyrgyz-Tajik frontier as a deputy PM in charge of security, defence and border issues — in his new post. Along with corruption, community conflict is the biggest problem facing the Kyrgyz mining sector today.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)

Kyrgyz president intends to serve 1 term

MAY 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atamabayev said that he would respect the constitution which limits him to one 6-year term in office, media reported. Mr Atambayev was voted into power in 2011. His election was the first peaceful transition of power in Kyrgyzstan since the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)