JUNE 13 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Perhaps looking to both its green credentials, the Kazakh authorities said they want to introduce bicycle-taxis from 2014, media reported. The first German-designed bicycle-taxis will trial in Pavlodar, north Kazakhstan, before appearing in Astana and Almaty.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
JUNE 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Two men shot dead Mukhit Kubayev, formerly Kazakhstan’s top aviation official, and Serik Bimurzin, a former world karate champion, on a remote stretch of road in western Kazakhstan, media reported. Police said that it was still unclear what the motive for the murders was.
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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
JUNE 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The figures in the BP Statistical Review of World Energy can be dry but the stories behind the figures are important.
The 2013 edition is an important barometer for the energy-centric economies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. The most telling figure for the region in this year’s edition of the review was that oil consumption in Kazakhstan grew by over 10% in 2012.
This is a large jump. In the countries covered in the review only Israel’s oil consumption increased at a higher rate. The global rise in oil consumption in 2012 was 0.9%.
The increase reflects Kazakhstan’s emergence from a sharp economic retraction triggered by the global crisis of 2008/9 when oil consumption fell.
Last year Kazakhstan, with a population of 17m, consumed 265,000 barrels of oil per day. By comparison, Uzbekistan, population 29.5m, consumed 82,000 barrels/day and Turkmenistan, population 5m, consumed 100,000 barrels/day.
Across the Caspian Sea, BP reported that Azerbaijan, population 9.3m, consumed 93,000 barrels of oil per day, a jump of 5.4%. This rise in Azerbaijan’s oil consumption, although not as big as Kazakhstan’s leap, still shows an increase in economic activity.
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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
JUNE 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Underlining increased investment in its transport infrastructure, a (relatively) high-speed train made its inaugural journey across Kazakhstan from Almaty to Atyrau on the Caspian Sea coast. The 2,600km journey, the longest in Kazakhstan, took 35 hours 30 minutes, down from 49 hours.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 7 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — About 30 homeowners protested in central Almaty against excessive interest rate repayments on their mortgages, media reported. This protest was important as it was a relatively rare public demonstration in Kazakhstan. Personal debt repayments have become a potentially thorny issue for the government.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Nurtai Abykayev, the 76-year-old head of Kazakhstan’s intelligence agencies, is experienced, calculating and a close confident of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
He would have weighed up the implications of telling a group of journalists on the sidelines of a meeting in Kazan, Russia, of intelligence chiefs from across the former Soviet Union that there were an estimated 100 Kazakhs training in militant camps in southern Afghanistan.
What he wanted to gain by releasing this figure is still unclear. Does he consider this a small or large number? Certainly global attention on defeating radical Islam has re-focused on Central Asia since a pair of ethnic Chechen brothers with links to Kyrgyzstan bombed the Boston marathon in April.
Since 2011 Kazakhstan has been trying to quell its own Islamic militant insurgency. It has blamed a series of bomb attacks on radical Islamists and locked up several dozen young men with apparent links to these militant groups.
Mr Abykayev may also have been trying to warn of the perils that Central Asia faces from 2014 when NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan and the Taliban are able to roam north.
Russia has been constantly voicing concern about the threat from militants once the NATO soldiers leave. Mr Abykayev may be adding Kazakhstan’s voice to these concerns.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Atyrau, west Kazakhstan, sentenced eight men to jail for terrorism related offences and links to radical Islamic groups, media reported. Seven of the men received prison sentences of 18 – 23 years. One received a one-year suspended sentence.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh security forces have interrogated Alma Shalabayeva, the wife of fugitive ex-banker Mukhtar Ablyazov, media reported. Italian police deported Ms Shalabayeva last week on allegations of holding an illegal passport. The Kazakh authorities accuse Ablyazov of plotting to overthrow the Kazakh government.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will spend roughly $3.2b a year until 2050 on developing alternative green energy sources and reducing its dependence on coal-fired power stations, energy minister Nurlan Kapparov told media. Coal-fired power stations produce roughly 80% of Kazakhstan’s power.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s parliament reduced the 2013 state budget by 4% because of low prices for metal and other mining exports. Metals have become an important part of Kazakhstan’s export earnings over the past few years but a global recession and sanctions against Iran, previously a major customer, have hit earnings.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)