SEPT. 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has increased its grain harvest forecast for 2013 to 18.5m tonnes from around 16m tonnes, media reported quoting agriculture minister Asylzhan Mamytbekov. The grain harvest has become an increasingly important part of Kazakhstan’s economy. In 2011 it harvested a post-Soviet record of 27m tonnes of grain.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Indian officials have been negotiating with their Kazakh counterparts to buy into various energy projects since missing out on a stake in the Kashagan Caspian Sea oil field earlier this year, media reported. India thought it had secured an 8.3% share of Kashagan for $5b only for Kazakhstan to hand the stake to China.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
KARAGANDA/Kazakhstan, OCT. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A towering statue of former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin once stood in the main square in Karaganda, an industrial city in central Kazakhstan.
Three years ago Karaganda’s government moved the Lenin statue to a windblown spot on the edge of the city and replaced it with a dazzling white column adorned with a golden eagle and a sun.
The displacement of Lenin fits a wider trend in Kazakhstan — the sweeping away of the symbols of the Soviet past in favour of Kazakh icons.
The new monument in Karaganda is similar to the Kazakh Country monument in Astana, one of many landmarks projecting a national identity.
The Kazakh elite, led by President Nursultan Nazarbayev, has adopted a number of symbols to help propel their narrative. The most obvious are the yurt, a spherical felt home of the nomads, and the samruk, a mythical phoenix-like bird, as well as the horse and the eagle.
Another ubiquitous symbol is the shanyrak, the circular wooden top of the yurt, with its distinctive criss-cross pattern that symbolises home, hearth and family happiness.
Just outside Karaganda, a museum in the village of Dolinka commemorates victims of Soviet political repression. This was once the biggest Soviet gulag in Kazakhstan.
Poignantly, at the entrance is a broken shanyrak representing Kazakhs killed by Soviet repression.
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(Correspondent’s Notebook from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
OCT. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked the country’s long-serving Central Bank chief Grigory Marchenko in a surprise move that may sow doubt over Kazakhstan’s economic direction.
Former economy minister Kairat Kelimbetov will take over from Mr Marchenko.
Mr Nazarbayev didn’t give a clear reason for sacking Mr Marchenko, considered a favourite of investors. Mr Marchenko, 53, was brought in to head Kazakhstan’s Central Bank for a second time in 2009 to help weather the financial crisis. Under his leadership Kazakhstan nationalised a handful of banks that were teetering on the brink of collapse and devalued the tenge national currency.
Mr Marchenko won international plaudits and in 2011 was touted as a possible replacement for Dominique Strass- Kahn, the disgraced French politician, as head of the IMF.
More recently, Kazakhstan’s Central Bank has been grappling with downward pressure on the tenge and the reorganisation of the country’s pension funds.
Mr Nazarbayev may have just decided that it was time for a change and to replace the notoriously independent-minded Mr Marchenko with the more pliant Mr Kelimbetov.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh bank KazInvestBank is investigating allegations that Darkhan Botabayev, one of its directors, punched a saleswoman working for Air Astana in the face after an argument, media reported. Reports said that police were called to the sales office in Almaty after the alleged attack.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
OCT. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked his Central Bank chief, Grigory Marchenko. Mr Marchenko had been head of Kazakhstan’s central bank since 2009. Mr Nazrarbayev didn’t give a clear reason for sacking Mr Marchenko. Former economy minister Kairat Kelimbetov was named as the new Central Bank chief.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Less than two weeks after the start of official production, a gas leak halted oil output at the Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea. The gas leak was relatively minor, energy minister Uzakbai Karabalin said, and it wouldn’t delay the start of commercial oil production next month.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will delay the issue of its long-muted $1b Eurobond until next year, Kuat Akizhanov, head of the ministry of finance’s borrowing department said in an interview with local media. Kazakhstan, which has not issued a Eurobond since 2007, has been talking about a sovereign debt issue throughout the year.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan is facing a petrol shortage because demand from industry and agriculture is overwhelming production, the head of the Kazakh Fuel Association Ashim Abdrakhmetov told reporters. Mr Abdrakhmetov said shortages are likely to worsen this year when one of Kazakhstan’s three refineries closes for an upgrade.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)
SEPT. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Early on Sept. 19 news started to filter through to Almaty’s small opposition intelligentsia that Bulat Abilov, one of their more charismatic leaders, was retiring.
At 56-years-old this could have some as a surprise, instead there was a knowing understanding.
Being an active opposition leader in Kazakhstan, even if you’re not a militant one, is exhausting. You’re increasingly marginalised and harassed. This has intensified since violence in the town of Zhanaozen, western Kazakhstan, in December 2011. At least 15 people died in fighting in Zhanaozen between police and demonstrators.
It appears as if Mr Abilov, a wealthy businessman, had just had enough.
A few days later, on Sept. 23, a court in Almaty suspended the Kazakh-language Ashyq Alan (Tribune) newspaper for three months. Its transgression was not to publish between July 10 and Aug. 21. Apparently this was in breach of its licence.
Ashyq Alan, a new weekly newspaper, is considered a critic of the government. Newspapers are not particularly influential in Kazakhstan, the readership numbers are too low, but suspending Ashyq Alan still resonates. Last year, the authorities suspended or closed a handful of opposition newspapers.
In the past week, dissenting voices in Kazakhstan have become even less audible.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)