AUG. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Romserv, part of the Rompetrol group, has won a $1b contract to modernise the refinery at Pavlodar in northern Kazakhstan, media reported. Kazakh state energy company Kazmunaigas bought a 75% stake in Rompetrol from Romania in 2007. The Pavlodar refinery was built in 1978 and is one of three in Kazakshtan.
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(News report from Issue No. 146, published on Aug. 5 2013)
JULY 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Roughly 50 people were injured when a freight train and a passenger train collided at Almaty’s main railway station, media reported. Of the injured, five were taken to hospital. An efficient rail infrastructure is essential in Kazakhstan. The government has pledged millions to modernise the network.
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(News report from Issue No. 145, published on July 29 2013)
ASTANA, JULY 29 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — With typical panache, the Kazakh capital marked its 15th birthday on July 6. By no coincidence Astana Day, as the public holiday is called, is also the birthday of the long-serving president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Astana is Mr Nazarbayev’s pet project. He moved the capital from Almaty, in the lush foothills of the Tien Shan mountains to the barren northern steppes in 1997.
On Astana Day, the reflection of skyscrapers made of steel and glass shimmered in the waters of the Yesil River. Crowds gathered around the Pyramid of Peace, designed by British architect Norman Foster, and the Kazakh Country column symbolising Kazakhstan’s sovereignty. A sculpture of Mr Nazarbayev is embedded into the column’s plinth.
For his critics this sort of architectural eulogy proves Mr Nazarbayev is fostering a cult of personality.
This year, a festival of Kazakh nomadic culture took place outside the Khan Shatyr shopping mall, whose swooping design resembles the regal tent of the nomadic rulers of old.
One poet sang of a time when Astana celebrated its 1,500th anniversary. By then Mr Nazarbayev will be long gone but probably not forgotten. Most Kazakhs believe Astana, which means capital, is destined one day to bear a more evocative name — that of Mr Nazarbayev himself.
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(News report from Issue No. 145, published on July 29 2013)
JULY 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s Central Bank scotched rumours of an impending devaluation of the tenge. The tenge is tightly bound to the Russian rouble which is relatively stable. In Feb. 2009, the Kazakh central bank devalued the tenge by 21% shortly after their Russian counterparts devalued the rouble.
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(News report from Issue No. 145, published on July 29 2013)
JULY 12 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has hired Citigroup, HSBC and JP Morgan to advise it on issuing a $1b Eurobond, Reuters reported quoting unnamed market sources. Kazakhstan has been saying for months that it is weighing up issuing its first sovereign debt since 2000.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Eurocopter Kazakhstan Engineering, a joint venture set up in 2011 between Kazakhstan and Europe’s EADS, plans to start making attack helicopters by the end of 2013, officials said in Astana. According to press reports Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are interested in buying the helicopters.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Infant mortality is an important benchmark for a country’s development, both economically and socially.
That’s why the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum includes infant mortality in its Global Competitiveness Index. That’s also why it matters that Unicef, the UN agency for children, reported on July 15 that Kazakhstan’s infant mortality has dropped by two-thirds since 1990.
Of course, it’s been all change in Kazakhstan since 1990 when it was a member of the Soviet Union. Back then, Nursultan Nazarbayev was chairman of the Kazakh Soviet. Almaty was the capital and the massive oil investments, funded mainly by foreign companies, were merely bare plans.
Now Kazakhstan is booming, economically, and socially.
Its public health service, though, is often derided as corrupt and inefficient so when Unicef said that infant deaths had fallen from 54 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to under 19 in 2012, it was consider something of a double success.
This is a clear boost for the Kazakh health service and, in economic terms, matches Kazakhstan’s development. That said, there is some way still to go. According to the World Bank, even the poorest country in the European Union, Bulgaria, has an infant mortality rate of roughly half that of Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kcell, the largest mobile phone operator in Kazakhstan, posted higher revenues in the first half of the year compared to a year earlier but slightly lower profit. Revenue for Kcell, a subsidiary of Swedish telecoms giant TeliaSonera, rose just over 4% to about $580m highlighting growth in the Kazakh mobile market.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kashagan, the giant oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea, will produce its first oil by end of 2013, said the consortium developing the field, the North Caspian Operating Company. Kazakhstan has staked its future on the successful completion of Kashagan and has become frustrated over delays.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh deputy interior minister, Yerlik Kenenbayev, was badly injured in a car crash in north Kazakhstan. The crash killed Mr Kenenbayev’s wife and son. It, again, highlighted Kazakhstan’s poor road safety record. Mr Kenenbayev and his family had been travelling back to Astana.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)