APRIL 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev attended a summit for the heads of state of the Customs Union (CU) in Minsk. The summit acted as a show of support for Russia which is facing sanctions on officials after the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea last month. Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan are CU members.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan is going to introduce a minimum capital banking requirement that will probably whittle down the number of banks in the country.
The head of the Kazakh Central Bank, Kairat Kelimbetov, said that to meet requirements laid out in Basel-III, a set of banking benchmarks drawn up after the global financial crisis of 2008/9, banks in Kazakhstan would have to increase their capital to 100b tenge ($550m) by 2019. T
his new requirement, analysts have since said, will cut the number of banks in Kazakhstan to roughly 15 to 20, from the current 38.
For Kazakhstan’s Central Bank this is undoubtedly a positive. It takes the view that the Kazakh banking sector needs to be reformed. There are currently too many banks and too many banks with large bad loan portfolios.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will boost exports of grain to Iran and China as it looks to reduce its reliance on Ukrainian and Russian ports, Reuters reported quoting the Kazakh grain trading company. The switch is a possible reaction to the turmoil in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — New car sales in Kazakhstan increased to nearly 35,000 in the first three months of 2014, a 25% increase on the same period in 2013, an industry lobby group reported. Nearly 80% of the new car sales were imports, suggesting that a 20% devaluation of the tenge in February hasn’t dented Kazakh consumer confidence.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Kazakhstan ordered the closure of the independent Assandi Times newspaper for retaining links to the banned opposition newspaper Respublika. New York-based Human Rights Group said: “This absurd case displays the lengths to which Kazakh authorities are willing to go to bully critical media into silence.”
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(News report from Issue No. 181, published on April 23 2014)
APRIL 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A passenger train running between Almaty and Atyrau, western Kazakhstan, derailed injuring 44 people. Kazakhstan is pouring cash into updating and modernising its rail infrastructure. Rail remains one of the main ways to travel around the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 181, published on April 23 2014)
APRIL 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — An Italian court granted refugee status to the wife and daughter of Mukhtar Ablyazov, a Kazakh former banker-turned-opposition leader currently in French custody awaiting the result of an extradition request from Kazakhstan. The ruling is a blow to Kazakhstan which had been looking to force their return.
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(News report from Issue No. 181, published on April 23 2014)
APRIL 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — China’s state-owned Sinopec bought the Kazakhstan business unit of Russia’s Lukoil for $1.2b. The deal to buy 50% of Caspian Investment Resources ltd (CIR) underlines the shift in Kazakhstan’s energy sector away from Russia towards China. Sinopec already owned the other 50% of CIR.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Perhaps with the turmoil in Ukraine in mind, Kazakh security forces held nationwide drills to test their readiness to quash protests. Kazakh officials are particularly nervous that Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine last month may encourage other regions with large Russian minorities to try to secede.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Eager to boost oil production, Kazakhstan has said that it wants to increase output from its current projects to make up for the shortfall created by the longer-than- expected shutdown at Kashagan. Kashagan had been expected to turn Kazakhstan into a major energy superpower but instead is currently under repair.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)