Tag Archives: Kazakhstan

Pen portrait: Dariga Nazarbayeva

MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – From part-time opera singer, to the ex-wife of one of her father’s most hated enemies, Dariga Nazarbayeva, the eldest daughter of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has led a life in the public eye.

She is now a deputy PM and had been an MP until quietly dropping off the Nur Otan party list, that’s her father’s party, at an election in March. But Ms Nazarbayeva, who turned 53-years-old on May 7, is never far from the headlines and this week she was revealed to have been the part- owner of a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. It is unclear what the company ever did or owned.

Although other public figures may be tarnished with such an association, Ms Nazarbayeva will no doubt be able to see out any fall out. Afterall, she has fallen from favour before and bounced back to be considered a potential next president of Kazakhstan.

Ms Nazarbayeva was married to Rakhat Aliyev, the one-time favourite of President Nazarbayev. Together they controlled some of Kazakhstan’s biggest industries before Aliyev rowed with his father-in-law in 2007.

He fled into exile, accused of murder and set himself up in Europe as an opponent. Ms Nazarbayeva, by contrast, stayed in Kazakhstan and slowly mended her relationship with her father. She disowned all links to her former husband and instead concentrated on building up her father’s trust. This seems to have paid off. Ms Nazarbayeva re-entered parliament as an MP at the parliamentary election in 2012 and was made a deputy PM last year.

More than a handful of analysts have now said that with no other clear contenders, Mr Nazarbayev could be grooming his eldest daughter to take over from him. She quit as an MP at the 2016 election, potentially making it easier for her to take the top job. It wouldn’t have been possible to be president and an MP.

Her father also now ensures that her profile is maintained by starring next to him at major events and speeches.

As for the opera singing, Ms Nazarbayeva is regarded as a decent amateur, even giving a concert at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, as well as appearing on Kazakh TV.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Revenues fall at VimpelCom’s regional subsidiaries

ALMATY, MAY 12 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) – Revenues at Russian mobile operator VimpelCom’s Central Asia and the South Caucasus operations were sharply down in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015, a sign of the continuing economic malaise that has undermined consumer confidence in the region.

In Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, VimpelCom operates under the Beeline brand. Its customer base in the region shrank by 6% to just above 24m, roughly in line with figures released last month by its rival TeliaSonera.

In Kazakhstan, VimpelCom said that revenue from its mobile operations was just under 24b tenge in Q1, 10% lower than 2015, and that its subscriber base had fallen 4% to 9.2m.

The Kazakh mobile market has become increasingly competitive. Sweden’s Tele2 merged with Kazakhstan’s Altel earlier this year and has been undercutting its bigger rivals.

In its quarterly report, VimpelCom said that prices would stay low.

“Competition remains intense, however, although the company continues to maintain its commercially rational pricing strategy,” it said. “Beeline expects the competitive environment to remain challenging throughout 2016.”

And, other than in Uzbekistan were a new pricing strategy had sustained revenues, it was a similar story in other subsidiaries. In Georgia revenues were down 30% in US dollar terms and in Tajikistan down 27%.

VimpelCom said of the drop in revenue in Tajikistan that this was “mainly due to lower incoming international traffic as a result of fewer migrants living abroad due to the macro-economic slowdown in the region and a weakening local currency.”

A recession in Russia has heavily reduced job opportunities for migrant workers from Tajikistan, hitting remittances and economies in Central Asia.

Earlier this year, VimpelCom paid a fine of $795m after it admitted paying bribes in 2007/8 to access the Uzbek mobile market.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Loan plugs Kazakh government’s deficit

MAY 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s ministry of finance said it has agreed to take a $1b loan from the World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to plug a budget deficit that has opened up since an economic downturn hit the region. Finance minister Bakhyt Sultanov, said the loan will have a 20-year maturity and will be used to pay for government expenses in 2016.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

UN condemns clampdown in Kazakhstan

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned what it said was the Kazakh authorities crackdown on protests against proposed amendments to the land code. “The government must immediately end all forms of persecution and take effective measures to protect civil society,” it said. The protests forced Pres. Nursultan Nazarbayev to delay planned changes to the land code. Mobile recordings of the protests showed police clashing with demonstrators.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

US freezes Kazakh businessman’s assets

MAY 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A US court froze a $21m payment that Kazakh businessmen Mukhtar Ablyazov and Viktor Khrapunov had sought from the sale of their stakes in Chetrit’s Flatotel, a hotel located in New York City. In 2013, French police arrested Ablyazov, charging him with embezzlement. Courts in Kazakhstan, Switzerland and the US have opened investiga- tions into corruption allegations aimed at Khrapunov when he was mayor of Almaty between 1997 and 2004.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Stock market: Central Asia Metals, KAZ Minerals

MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Copper prices dipped below the psychological threshold of $2/lb in mid January, for the first time since 2009, and it has bit of a roller-coaster ride since.

Shares of Central Asia Metals and KAZ Minerals, two Kazakhstan– focused producers, have followed copper’s ups and downs.

As shown in the graph above, shares in KAZ Minerals, which mines copper in northern and eastern Kazakhstan, have fluctuated more dramatically with copper prices.

Shares in Central Asia Metals, have been more stable.

With copper prices now sliding back towards $2/lb, share prices for both Central Asia Metals and KAZ Minerals are falling. This week, they were down 5.3% and 9% respectively.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Orsu reveals Q1 results in Kazakhstan

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Toronto-listed miner Orsu Metals lost $437,000 in the first quarter of 2016, cutting its losses by around 50% from the same period last year. Most of the company’s losses are now booked for “assets held for sale”. Last month, Orsu agreed to sell its Karchiga and Kogodai mines in Kazakhstan to UAE-registered Karasat Trading for around $10m. After announcing the sale, Orsu de-listed from London’s AIM.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

China states farming deal with Kazakhstan

MAY 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Chinese companies said they will invest around $1.9b in Kazakhstan’s agriculture sector over the next few years, in an effort to boost trade and cooperation through its Silk Road Initiative. Gulmira Isayeva, Kazakhstan’s deputy minister of agriculture, told the FT that Chinese investment will help increase domestic production.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Kazakh leader sets up new ministry of information

ALMATY, MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A new information ministry announced last week by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will likely act as a censor and increase government control over the media, journalists and analysts said.

Mr Nazarbayev announced the Soviet-sounding ministry of information at the same time as he said that planned reforms to the land code would be postponed after they sparked a series of protests across the country.

He blamed a lack of public information about the reforms for the protests and said the new ministry would ease the flow of information from government to the people.

Political analyst Aidos Sarym said he thought that Mr Nazarbayev had been genuinely concerned his land reforms plans had been misunderstood.

“Authorities think that protests are just lack of communication. They think that if they will explain ‘properly’ to people, people will take it,” he said. “Nazarbayev understands that he lost his connection to the majority of population.”

But in an opinion piece on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Russian language website, reporter Svetlana Glushkova said that the government would try to use the new ministry to control social media, one of the few places where some form of free speech still exists in Kazakhstan, more tightly.

“I think the new ministry will increase control over social media, at first. Now you cannot see it [free speech] in TV or newspapers so the real resentment of the people, you will find it only on social media. The truth is there,” she said.

Kuralay Abylgazina, a journalist for a local news agency, agreed. She told the Bulletin that protests against the land reforms had worried the government.

“As of now, the ministry will most likely control content only from government media, but in future it will initiate some laws to regulate press freedom in the country,” she said. “And then we will see if this new government organ is a ministry of censorship.”

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Leak shows Kazakh Pres. daughter owned stake in offshore company

ALMATY, MAY 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Dariga Nazarbayeva, eldest daughter of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, owned a stake in an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands, a massive leak of data from a law firm in Panama showed.

The company called Asterry Holdings ltd was registered in the BVI in Sept. 2007 and struck off nearly five years later. Its offices were registered in Liechtenstein. It is unclear what assets the company ever held.

The revelation, though, is the second time that Kazakhstan’s ruling family has appeared in the Panama Papers. Ms Nazarbayeva’s son Nurali Aliyev, was revealed earlier this year to be the owner of a yacht and two other companies registered in BVI by Panama based Mossack Fonseca law company a the centre of the leak.

Both Ms Nazarbayeva and Mr Aliyev have high profiles in Kazakhstan. Ms Nazarbayeva is a deputy PM and has been spoken of as a future Kazakh president.

Mr Aliyev had been the deputy mayor of Astana until he quit abruptly in March so that he could concentrate on what he described as his business interests.

But with the economic outlook in Kazakhstan worsening, inflation rising and people losing their jobs, Mr Nazarbayev is treading carefully.

He is increasingly aware that he, his family and their supporters among the elite have to avoid being seen as excessively privileged and out-of-touch with ordinary people who have been struggling to survive what has become an increasingly tough and drawn out economic downturn.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)