MAY 29 2017 (The Bulletin) — Car imports from Russia into Kazakhstan dropped by 11% in the first quarter of the year to 4,700 cars, media reported. Reports said the drop in Russian car imports was mainly due to a sharp rise in prices linked to a drop in the value of the Kazakh tenge. In the first quarter of 2014, Kazakhstan imported 32,400 cars from Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)
JUNE 2 2017 (The Bulletin) — Halyk Bank will buy Kazkommertsbank’s two largest shareholder’s combined stake of 54% for a nominal fee of $1, Reuters reported. The nominal fee highlights the state-sponsored natured of the merger, agreed in March, between the country’s two largest banks. Under the deal, a government unit set up to buy banks’ bad debt will buy 2.4 trillion tenge ($7.5b) of bad debt from the new bank. Kazkommertsbank’s two biggest shareholder are Kenes Rakishev, a financier close to the elite, and Samruk Kazyna, the sovereign wealth fund.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)
ALMATY, JUNE 1 2017 (The Bulletin) — Russian gold miner Polymetal increased its stake in the Kazakh mine Dolinnoye to 50% by buying a 25% stake for $1.6m.
Polymetal bought its original 25% stake in the gold mine, based in northern Kazakhstan, in 2015. Polymetal is one of Kazakhstan’s biggest mining companies.
“This transaction further expands and strengthens our Varvara hub concept,” said Vitaly Nesis, Group
CEO of Polymetal. “We expect first ore to go through the mill in Q3 2017.”
The so-called Varvara hub is the collective term that Polymetal uses to describe its group of gold mines in Kazakhstan centered around the processing plant of the same name.
Polymetal’s assets in Kazakhstan include, the Kyzyl project in north- eastern Kazakhstan. In 2015, it bought the Kyzyl project for $620m from Sumeru, a private group owned by Timur Kulibayev, son-in-law of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
In the first quarter of the year, Polymetal said that its gold production had increased by 8% compared to the same period in 2016, helped partially by a rise output at the the Varvara hub.
It also said, though, that its Kazakh operations had required more capital investment than expected.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)
JUNE 1 2017 (The Bulletin) — Two unnamed Kazakh citizens were injured in a bomb in central Kabul that killed more than 90 people, media reported. Their injuries are not thought to be life- threatening. The bomb ripped through Kabul’s diplomatic quarter damaging several embassies.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)
MAY 31 2017 (The Bulletin) — Banks in Kazakhstan are restricting lending to construction companies over concerns that they are failing to pay back loans, the website energyprom.kz reported. It said that at the end of March banks’ loan portfolio to construction projects was 3.8% lower than it had been a year earlier and nearly half the amount of 2008/9. No construction companies commented on the data. The construction sector is one of the drivers of the economy. Any slowdown in activity is a leading indicator that the economy still has some way to go before it recovers from a general malaise since 2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)
ASTANA , JUNE 5 2017 (The Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s only ambition for its role in hosting peace talks focused on the war in Syria is to find a peaceful solution, deputy foreign minister Roman Vassilenko told The Bulletin in an interview.
He rejected views put out by some commentators that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev was using the process to burnish Astana’s image as an alternative to Geneva for peace negotiations.
“We are not doing this for reputation, this is secondary. The primary thing with Syria for us is to help end the bloodshed,” he said.
Officials from Russia, Turkey, Iran, the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and Syrian rebels are due to converge on Astana in June for a fifth round of talks, a process considered important for working towards peace in Syria because it brings together the main parties involved in the conflict.
Political talks under the United Nations are continuing in Geneva, with the Astana process concentrating on finding practical ways to stop the fighting.
Mr Vassilenko said that Kazakhstan had been asked by Turkish President Reccep Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin to host the talks, which started in January, because it had good relations with all the parties and was considered a neutral venue.
“We are not direct participants in the talks. Our role is to be as gracious a hosts as possible,” he said.
Regardless of its ambitions, though, the Syria talks have boosted Kazakhstan’s profile, a limelight that it has previously sought. Kazakhstan is currently a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, it hosted talks centred on Iran’s nuclear programme in 2013 and in 2010 it hosted the first summit meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Europe’s security and democracy watchdog, for 11 years.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)
JUNE 5 2017 (The Bulletin) — Kazakh officials were busy putting the final touches together for EXPO-2017 which Astana is hosting for three months from June 8. President Nursultan Nazarbayev opened a new Ritz-Carlton hotel in Astana, and a new airport terminal and train station were also opened. Media also reported that Kazakh police were getting lessons on how to be polite to tourists.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)
MAY 31 2017 (The Bulletin) — Kazakhstan unveiled a new monument marking a famine between 1931-33, blamed on the forced collectivisation by the Soviet Union of the nomadic Kazakhs, that killed an estimated 1.5 m people. The monument, set in a central park in Almaty, shows a Kazakh woman carrying an emaciated boy in her arms.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)
MAY 29 2017 (The Bulletin) — Tengizchevroil, Kazakhstan’s largest oil producer, briefly suspended production after a toxic substance was released at its plant. The company, owned by Chevron, ExxonMobil, Lukoil and Kazmunaigas, restarted operations a few hours later. It said that there had been no injuries or damage to equipment from the spill which is blamed on a powercut.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)
MAY 30 2017 (The Bulletin) — Kazakh human rights activists said that a law being discussed in parliament is designed to prevent independent candidates from running in presidential elections. The new law, when it is passed, will block “non-serious” candidates from running. Kazakhstan has never held an election considered free or fair by international observers. President Nazarbayev won an election in 2015 with 98% of the vote.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)