Tag Archives: Kazakhstan

Blair flies to Georgia for ‘working dinner’ with PM

NOV. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Has Tony Blair, the former British PM, found himself a new client? Speculation that he was now advising the Georgian Dream coalition government spiked after he flew to Tbilisi for dinner with Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili.

Mr Blair’s business outfit, Tony Blair Associates, declined to comment but the Georgians were more keen to show off their much-feted visitor.

The PM’s website hosted a 1.58 minute long video showing Mr Blair and Mr Garibashvili enjoying the view, and a glass of wine, from a restaurant above Tbilisi before taking a funicular ride back down to the city.

The Georgian PM’s office described the meeting as a “working dinner”.

“Georgia’s democratic reforms, the situation in the world and the region, were the main topics of the meeting,” the PM’s office said without giving any more information. Perhaps the emphasis should be on “working dinner”. It’s likely that Mr Garibashvili would have paid for Mr Blair’s advice. Plenty of other leaders, including Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, have.

And Mr Blair’s wife, a lawyer, is also involved in Georgia. Her company, Omnia Strategy, has been advising the Georgian justice system. It’s unclear exactly what advice, Mr Blair imparted. Although influential, his reputation is generally accepted to have been stained by the 2003 war in Iraq that he pursued with US President George W. Bush. Still, Georgia is an avowed fan of Mr Bush. It has named a street after him, and was one of his biggest allies during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)

TeliaSonera’s appoints Tajik Tcell’s head as Eurasia VP

NOV. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swedish mobile provider TeliaSonera appointed the former head ofTcell, Tajikistan’s biggest mobile network provider, Mansur Khamidov to be a vice-president in charge of the Eurasia region. TeliaSonera is currently restructuring its operations and has said that it wants to sell its Eurasia companies, partly because of corruption allegations alleged against its Uzbek subsidiary. As well as Tajikistan, TeliaSonera owns mobile operations in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)

Demand for crop monitoring kit rises in Kazakhstan

NOV. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Cyprus-registered New Science Technologies, which sells satellite crop monitoring equipment, said that demand for its products is growing in Kazakhstan and that it has had to build new capacity. Kazakhstan has increased its grain harvest considerably over the past few years. Kazakhstan’s wheat fields are vast and need satellite technology to monitor.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)

Kazakhstan’s Halyk Bank files Q3 results

NOV. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Halyk Bank, one of Kazakhstan’s largest retail banks, reported increased net income in the third quarter of 2015 of 36b tenge, roughly a third larger than the third quarter of 2014. In US dollar terms, taking into account the devaluation of the tenge, Q3 2015 and Q3 2014 are roughly the same. Operating expenses grew by 12.7% in the first 9 months of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014 because of wage inflation linked to the devaluation of the tenge.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)

Kazakh car sales fall

NOV. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — New car sales in Kazakhstan have fallen by 37.7% since the start of the year, media reported quoting the Kazakh Association of Autobusin- esses. Overall, retailers sold 84,560 cars in Kazakhstan up to the end of October. Renault is one of the few car brands that has increased sales this year. The data showed that its sales had risen by 12.5% in Kazakhstan. A fall in the value of oil and a drop in the value of the tenge currency have hit the economy and dented consumer confidence.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)

Currencies: Kazakhstan’s tenge, Kyrgyzstan’s som

NOV. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh tenge was steady this week, trading at around 307.2/$1, off an all-time low against the US dollar of 311/$1 earlier in November.

There is still much speculation by analysts on just how monetary policy in Central Asia’s biggest economy is going to change under new Central Bank chief Daniyar Akishev. He said that inflation was too high and appeared to make this his priority.

With this in mind, expect another interest rate rise at the Central Bank’s policy meeting next month — if the policy wonks don’t cancel it again. There are, though, two urgent problems, it seems to me, with the Kazakh monetary policy. People don’t know what it is or whether it works.

The new key interest rate — overnight repo rates — was only introduced in September. It was raised in October to 16% from 12% and then ignored in November when the Central Bank cancelled its policy meeting at the last moment. Does this interest rate have any credibility? Does the market even care about it? It doesn’t appear to have had any effect so far.

And Mr Akishev appeared to acknowledge as much when he said that a fall in oil price would send the tenge tumbling further. Oil prices, outside the Kazakh Central Bank’s control, are the driver of tenge value and not its key interest rate.

In neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, the som currency did continue to set new records against the US dollar. It hit an all-time low on Friday of 72.5/$1 versus 71.9/$1 at the start of the week. On Oct 1, the som had been valued at 68.8/$1, meaning that it has lost over 5% of its value in the past seven weeks.

As the Bulletin reports in the main section of the newspaper, information coming out of Turkmenistan is that its manat currency has devalued and that the government has placed restrictions on the amount of cash people can withdraw from the banks. Earlier this month, The Bulletin also reported on the devaluation of the Uzbek soum.

Even staunchly controlled currencies are feeling the pressure, it seems.

And over in the South Caucasus, it is a similar story. Since its sharp 33% devaluation in February, the Azeri manat has been kept steady but analysts have increased chat of a need to devalue again.

Both the Armenian dram and the Georgian lari were steady through the week.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)

Tax on petrol to double in Kazakhstan

NOV. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Seemingly trying to defy logic, the Kazakh government said it wanted to double tax on petrol but that the price rise would not add to inflationary pressure in the economy.

The day after economy minister Yerbolat Dossayev said that he wanted to increase tax on petrol, the new head of the Kazakh Central Bank Daniyer Akishev also said inflation this year in Kazakhstan was likely to be above even the upper 8% estimate.

The tenge has almost halved in value since the Central Bank ditched its US dollar peg in August, forcing prices up across economy.

Shortly after the tenge lost its US dollar peg, the government also ditched it price control over petrol, allowing prices to increase to match the tenge devaluation.

And now Mr Dossayev has said that he wants tax on a tonne of petrol to rise to 10,500 tenge ($16.70) from 5,000 tenge ($34.10) which would equal, roughly, to an increase of around 5% for consumers.

Petrol prices have already risen around 25% this year and any further increase will be unpopular.

As for inflation in general, Mr Akishev, made Central Bank chief at the start of the month, said targeting inflation was now his highest priority.

“Our task now is to ensure stable inflation and get back to the range of 6-8% in 2016,” he said.

The problem for Kazakhstan is that with oil prices continuing to be suppressed, pressure builds on the tenge to fall further which means that inflationary pressure also builds.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)

Condor hits dry well in Kazakhstan

NOV. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Toronto-based Condor Petroleum said in its third quarter results that it had had to abandon an exploration well it had drilled in the Zharkamys West field in western Kazakhstan after it was found to be dry. Condor suspended production in Kazakhstan earlier this year because oil prices were too low to turn a profit.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)

Kazakhstan’s Samruk Kazyna sells stakes

NOV. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk Kazyna said that it would sell stakes in two of its power related companies, its nuclear agency Kazatomprom and its power holding company Samruk-Energo, within a year, part of a wide-scale IPO of state- owned companies.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)

KAZ Minerals invest in Kazakh copper

NOV. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — KAZ Minerals, the Kazakh copper producer, plans to build two hydro- metallurgical processing plants in Zhezkazgan, central Kazakhstan, to extract more copper from low value, media reported. The combined project will cost around $30m. KAZ Minerals is one of Kazakhstan’s most important companies and has been linked to the elite.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)