Tag Archives: Kazakhstan

Shares plummet for one of Kazakhstan’s biggest banks

SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Shares in Kazkommertzbank have nose-dived since it bought a stake in BTA Bank from the Kazakh government.

By the end of September, shares in KazKom, as the bank is commonly known, traded at $1.65 on the Kazakh Stock Exchange, down by 37.5% since July when it completed buying nearly half of BTA.

Analysts said the drop highlighted the toxic nature of BTA’s bad debt portfolio and a drop in profit. KazKom said profit for the first half of 2014 was down by 6%.

A source from the banking industry said: “Most bad loans are with BTA which is unable to recover them from its debtors. This entails a huge cost.”

Mountains of bad debt still holds back Kazakhstan’s financial sector, a legacy of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/9 when the government had to buy up a handful of banks. One of these was BTA Bank.

At the end of last year, the Kazakh government said it wanted to sell its shares in government-owned banks.

Kenes Rakishev, a young Kazakh businessman with strong links to the elite and KazKom, controlled by the London- based businessman Nurzhan Subkhanberdin agreed in February to buy the bank. At the time, sources with knowledge of the Kazakh finance centre said buying BTA Bank made no business sense for KazKom. Instead, they said, it was a political move by Mr Subkhanberdin to win favour.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)

Individuality shunned in Kazakh film industry

ALMATY/Kazakhstan, OCT. 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan is enjoying something of a renaissance in film-making but it’s not easy, as one young script-writer explained over tea.

Erlan Suluhan, 25, is one of many Kazakh students who received a scholarship from the US government to pursue their studies in the United States. Last year he returned from studying at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. One of his projects was a short movie depicting the adventures of an older woman who gets lost inside her own building.

“I was trying to find the turning point between the formation of one’s identity and the crisis that inevitably emerges,” he said in an interview in a cafe in Almaty.

He poured himself another cup of tea from a porcelain pot.

“Looking at Kazakhstan through the prism of the development of single identities could spark questions that are silenced nowadays within the society,” Suluhan said.

His film, 18’21, was acclaimed at the Cannes Festival this year. In Kazakhstan it was shunned.

KazakhFilm, the state-owned agency refused to support him, because he carried out his project independently. The message the film carried, about individualism, may have rankled too.

Still, KazakhFilm has been enjoying some success over the past couple of years. Last year another film by a Kazakh writer won the second prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

Looking ahead to his next film, Suluhan was sanguine about the complexities of writing films about personal choice in a Kazakhstan where the government places more emphasis on conformity.

“I don’t want to get explicitly political, because I don’t want to tell the audience what to think,” he said. “Instead, I’m interested in poking, rousing, inducing people to reflect on themselves by showing the significance of minor everyday chores and their impact on the creation of the self.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)

Kazakh President snubs green energy

SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev hinted at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he may not be as enamoured with green energy as he has suggested.

This is important because Kazakhstan’s government has spent time and money promoting itself as a standard bearer for Green Energy, including devoting much of the sales pitch of its centrepiece event EXPO-2017 in Astana to it.

“I personally do not believe in alternative energy, such as wind, and solar,” media quoted Mr Nazarbayev as saying after meeting Mr Putin in Atyrau on the Caspian Sea coast.

“I think the shale euphoria also does not make much sense. Oil and gas are our main horses and we do not need to be afraid that they are fossil fuels.”

This view may not be that surprising, afterall the economies of both Kazakhstan and Russia are based on oil and gas exports.

Even so, Kazakhstan has given the impression it wants to move on from its reliance on oil and gas for its wealth.

Throughout Kazakhstan’s cities advertise EXPO-2017 with posters carrying the slogan ‘The Energy of the Future’ against a background of a green valley filled with wind turbines and solar panels.

Kazakhstan’s future energy policy is further complicated because it has agreed a deal with Russia to build a new nuclear power station.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)

Kazakh car production rises

SEPT. 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan produced 6% more cars between January and August this year compared to the same period in 2013, the state’s statistics committee reported. The data shows that the Kazakh economy is still relatively buoyant despite the decline of the all-important Russian economy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Kazakhstan tries to balance all sides over Ukraine

SEPT. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan is having to play a precarious balancing game to keep competing interests in and around Ukraine happy, Kazakh foreign minister Erlan Idrissov said in an interview with Reuters in New York.

Mr Idrissov was in the United States to meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry to reaffirm the two countries’ friendly ties.

The complexity of Kazakhstan’s position is not just down to its geographically position but also because of its membership of the Kremlin-led Customs Union.

“We as a matter of principle support an independent, sovereign, forward-looking, advancing politically and economically Ukraine. That is the core of our policy towards Ukraine,” Mr Idrissov said in the interview.

“We take no sides.”

The United States and the EU have imposed economic sanctions on Russia which has slowed its economy and triggered a knock-on effect on neighbouring Central Asia. Russian economic growth powers Central Asian economies.

Mr Idrissov underlined the impact of sanctions on Kazakhstan. “The crisis prevents the entire area from focusing on economic development and delivering well-being to the population,” he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Russia handed ex-BTA to Kazakhstan

SEPT. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia handed over Erlan Kosaev, a former BTA Bank official wanted in connection with fraud, to Kazakhstan for prosecution. Mr Kosaev was a colleague of Mukhtar Ablyazov, who is currently in a French jail. Kazakhstan wants to extradite Mr Ablyazov although rights groups have said that he wouldn’t face a fair trial.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Kazakh city improves for finance

SEPT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Almaty sees itself as the financial centre of Central Asia and, increasingly, as a hub for businesses and companies wanting to straddle Europe and Asia.

And it appears as if it is earning plaudits.
In the latest ranking by London-based consultancy Z/Yen of the world’s most important financial centres, Almaty ranked

43 out of 84 cities, a jump from 58 in February. Only Istanbul, in Eastern and Central Europe, ranks higher in 42nd position.

Professor Michael Mainelli, chairman, Z/Yen Group told the Conway Bulletin that instability in Europe, mainly triggered by the civil war in Ukraine, had diminished cities’ standings there to Almaty’s benefit.

“Political turmoil throughout the Middle East and Asia, particularly in oil-rich dictatorships, seems to put Almaty on a more even footing with its competitors,” he said.

The index is ranked on several different areas. These are business environment; financial sector development; infrastructure; human capital; reputation and general factors.

Since the first Global Financial Centres Index was launched in 2007, Almaty has steadily improved its ranking. Good news, indeed, for Kazakhstan’s financial sector.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Halyk Bank to buy HSBC Kazakhstan

SEPT. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Central Bank officially decreed that Halyk Bank, one of the country’s biggest banks, could buy HSBC’s Kazakh subsidiary. Halyk Bank agreed to buy HSBC’s Kazakh operation earlier this year for around $175m. HSBC is streamlining its business, cutting the less profitable operations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Petrol running out in Kazakhstan

SEPT. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Aktobe region in northwest Kazakhstan is on the brink of running out of petrol, the regional government’s business head Bagzhan Tlegenov said. Supplies of petrol have been particularly tight since August because of low refinery capacity in Kazakhstan and falling imports from Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

Kazakh city’s healthcare crumble

SEPT. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – An influx of migrants to Almaty looking for jobs has reduced the quality of public healthcare in the city, Kazakhstan’s deputy PM, Gulshara Abdykalikova, told media. Ms Abdykalikova specifically said that the quality of doctors and nurses needed to be improved.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)