Tag Archives: Kazakhstan

CPC increases flow from Kazakhstan to Russia

JAN. 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), a pipeline designed to transport oil from the Tengiz oil field in western Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea coast, said it had increased its output by 7% in 2015, in line with its expansion plans. CPC has now reached a throughput of 42.8m tonnes, up from just below 40m tonnes in 2014. Chevron, Lukoil, Shell, BG and ENI own stakes in CPC. The Tengiz oil field if one of Kazakhstan’s most important oil projects.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Kazakh Samruk-Kazyna sacks staff

JAN. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Samruk-Kazyna, the company that manages Kazakhstan’s state assets, said that it had made nine out of 16 of its directors redundant to save money. Like other state institutions, Samruk-Kazyna has been ordered to save costs to combat a drastic economic slow- down triggered by a slump in oil prices and a recession in Russia. Samruk-Kazyna’s chairman Umirzak Shukeyev announced the planned changes just before Christmas.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Fund chief leaves in Kazakhstan

JAN. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Berik Otemurat left the Kazakh National Investment Corporation, the unit within the Central Bank that invests money from the Oil Fund, after he gave a series of interviews to major Western publications criticising its strategy. It’s unclear if Mr Otemurat was sacked or he resigned. Eszhan Birtanov, former head of the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange, was named as the new head of the National Investment Corporation.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Kazakh city airport gets new boss

JAN. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Anuar Saidenov, former Kazakh Central Bank chief and ex-board member at BTA Bank and Bank RBK, was appointed chairman of the company managing Almaty airport. Since 2011, Netherlands based Venus Airport Investments has owned Almaty International Airport.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Kazakhstan’s gold reserves fall

JAN. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s foreign and gold reserves fell to $27.2b at the end of December, their lowest level since August 2014, data from the Central Bank showed. Like other countries across the region, Kazakhstan has been propping up its tenge currency by selling its reserves. The tenge has halved in value over the past year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Editorial: Kazakhstan’s parliament

JAN. 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – It doesn’t happen often that a parliament asks the president to order its dissolution and call for elections. But in Kazakhstan, MPs feel they have fulfilled their obligations and, with one voice apparently, asked for an early vote.

The economic downturn could potentially lead to the formation of organised opposition in Kazakhstan and the calling of snap presidential elections last year and, in a similar fashion, this year would prevent dissent.

Although it was the MPs calling for it, the decision to call for early elections came from the top. The elite wants to consolidate its power within the various political institutions in light of a prospective transition.

President Nurtsultan Nazarbayev has indicated that he is likely to hand over to a successor at the end of his current term as president in 2020. If the transition goes as planned, the successor will be chosen from the political elite that is currently in charge of the major institutional positions.

The name of the new speaker of the Majilis and the percentage of seats that go to the ruling Nur Otan party are the two main things to monitor.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Rail revenues fall in Kazakhstan

JAN. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Revenues earned by the Kazakh national railway company were down by 12.6% in the 11 months to the end of November compared to the same period in 2014, the ranking.kz website reported. The website said that passenger numbers had dropped off, another sign of the tight grip that the current economic downturn has taken of Kazakhstan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Kazakhstan scraps nuclear plans

DEC. 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh government has scrapped plans to build a new nuclear power station, despite years of speculation over its location, size and financing, media reported quoting energy minister Vladimir Shkolnik. Mr Shkolnik said the country was producing enough power from other sources, although the government’s shrinking budget probably played a role in the decision.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Utility prices rise in Kazakhstan

JAN. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Media in Kazakhstan reported that utility companies had increased water and electricity prices by up to 15%, more evidence of latent inflation in the Kazakh economy linked to a sharp drop in the value of the tenge. Analysts have said frustration is growing among ordinary people about price rises. Electricity price rises in particular are a sensitive issue across the S.Caucasus/C.Asia region.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan diversify investment strategies

ALMATY, JAN. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan will diversify the investment portfolios of their Sovereign Wealth Funds in 2016 away from low yield bonds and currency holdings to high- risk equity and property investments.

Slow global economic growth has forced Sovereign Wealth Funds to ditch conservative investment strategies in search of higher yields and Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are following a trend.

Bloomberg News quoted Berik Otemurat, director at the Kazakh Central Bank’s National Investment Corporation, as saying: “We’re sitting on a huge pile of cash and not making real returns. It’s especially urgent to address this, given the gloomy outlook for oil prices and reduced inflows into the National Fund.”

Azerbaijani officials have said that they want to increase the cap on real estate investment in its investment portfolio to 10% from 5%for 2016, as well as raising the cap for equity investment to 15% from 10%. SOFAZ, Azerbaijan’s oil fund, has been buying up high-profile property for the past couple of years and it started 2016 by buying a 19th century palazzo in Milan for 97m euro.

“In 2016, SOFAZ will be implementing investment policy, which makes it possible to get the maximum yield at low risk of capital loss,” SOFAZ said of its of strategy.

But Indra Overland, research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, said Sovereign Wealth Funds follow market trends, rather than set them, which generates a risk that will buy at the top, rather than the bottom, of the market.

“This change is probably driven by a combination of desperation over low oil price, dissatisfaction with historically low returns on bonds and worries about the stability of financial markets, especially related to China,” Mr Overland said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)