Tag Archives: Kazakhstan

Kazakh President gives views on Gorbachev

OCT. 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has had a ringside view on some of history’s most important moments. This includes the collapse of the Soviet Union and the final years of Mikhail Gorbachev’s time in power.

And, for perhaps the first time, Mr Nazarbayev gave his views on Mr Gorbachev to a correspondent from the tengrinews.kz website.

“I had to work in the system during the Soviet period and I was one of the critics of Gorbachev’s reforms, who believed that socialism could be corrected and we could move on,” he said.

“He had the expression of ‘socialism with a human face’ but no one understood what this was. Probably he wanted something close to a market economy. But if public companies are controlled by corporate market principles, the problem, as you see, is successfully solved.”

Rather than giving a historical insight of working under Mr Gorbachev, this statement may have been Mr Nazarbayev’s real point. He wanted to promote the idea of strong state- owned companies working in a market economy and also highlight the example of China, now an important ally of Kazakhstan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)

Kazakhstan strives for petrol self-sufficiency

OCT. 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Repairs and upgrades to Kazakhstan’s three oil refineries should mean that by 2016 or 2017 the country is self-sufficient in petrol, Kazakh energy minister Vladimir Shkolnik said in comments to parliament. Kazakhstan’s energy ministry has ruled out building a fourth oil refinery to meet demand.

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(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)

Kazakhstan extends Visa-free travel

OCT. 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Visa free travel for citizens of 10 countries will be extended by three months to Oct. 15 2015, said the head of the Kazakh state tourism board, Rashid Shaikenov (Oct. 6). Mr Shaikenov also said the experiment, which started in July, had increased tourism by 13%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)

Turkmen President talks up Caspian Sea pipeline

OCT. 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s president Kurgbanguly Berdymukhamedov ended a meeting of the leaders of the countries that border the Caspian Sea by saying that it was their right to build a pipeline across the inland water, media reported.

The meeting — which included the leaders of Russia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Azerbaijan — broke up without any major deals although they did agree not to allow NATO forces into the region.

Perhaps the most important single element of the meeting, though, were reports from Astrakhan, the venue in Russia for the meeting, that appeared to push the possibility of a sub-Caspian Sea gas pipeline nearer.

This has been touted before but has never been put into action. The cost has previously been considered too great but now, with demand for energy increasing from Europe, it may make business sense to build the pipeline.

There is also the extra added consideration that most of the infrastructure needed to pump the gas on from Azerbaijan to Europe has already been built or is scheduled to be built soon.

This week Azerbaijan’s president welcomed the deputy PM of Turkmenistan to Baku. Last week the head of Azerbaijan’s energy company SOCAR was in Ashgabat. There may be some reason behind all this activity. One to watch.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)

Sliding rouble pressures Kazakhstan’s tenge

OCT. 31 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A 40% drop in the value of the rouble this year is placing extreme pressure on Russia’s main trade partners, including Kazakhstan, experts have said.

Banking analysts have said that it is increasingly likely the Kazakh Central Bank will have to follow the rouble and devalue its own tenge currency for the second time this year.

The Tengrinews website quoted Raimbek Batalov, director at Raimbek Group, as saying that the fluctuating value of the tenge was hurting exporters. Kazakh goods are now far too expensive for their main export market — Russia.

And reports have emerged from across Kazakhstan that people are rushing to banks to sell their tenge before an imminent devaluation.

Falling oil prices and sanctions imposed by the West have pressured the rouble while the Kazakh Central Bank has insisted on keeping the tenge pegged to the US dollar since its 20% devaluation in February.

Luca Anceschi, professor of Central Asian Studies at the University of Glasgow explained that the rouble was introduced in 1993 to reduce Kazakhstan’s dependency on the rouble. Instead, he said, the opposite has happened.

“The policies pursued since 1993, if anything, have de facto re-established such dependency,” he said.

Increased economic integration with the Eurasian Economic Union gives Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev even less room to manoeuvre.

A second devaluation, to keep pace with Russia’s currency slide, must be approaching fast despite the Central Bank’s denials.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 207, published on Nov. 5 2014)

Russia to supply fuel to Kazakhstan

SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian energy companies Lukoil and Bashneft will supply Kazakhstan with extra petrol and diesel fuel to make up for the current shortfall, Russian news agency RIA-Novosti quoted Russia’s energy minister, Alexander Novak, as saying. Kazakhstan has a shortage of refinery capacity which is causing shortages.

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