FEB. 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh special forces killed six alleged Islamic extremists and arrested 15 more in raids in January in Almaty, media reported quoting the interior ministry. The ministry said they also found arms caches, including grenades. Central Asian countries have been on alert to counter a perceived growth in recruitment by Islamic extremists.
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(News report from Issue No. 317, published on Feb.17 2017)
FEB. 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The value of Kazakhstan’s exports fell by 20% in 2016, the Central Bank said, reflecting just how heavily the drop in oil prices has hit the country. It said that exports dropped to $37.2b. In 2016, the average price of a barrel of Brent oil was $42.80. In 2015 it had been $50.80. This year, oil prices have hovered around $55/barrel.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — WorldRemit, a money wire service, said that it had extended its services to Armenia and Kazakhstan as well as Ukraine and Belarus, through a partnership with the Russian payment system Contact. Previously, London-based WorldRemit has concentrated its services in southeast Asia and Africa. It said that WorldRemit will operate 330 service points in Kazakhstan and 65 in Armenia. Remittances are a vital plank of the economies of Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s banking sector needs urgent care and attention if the country is going to be able to pull through an economic downturn that has destroyed growth and wiped out people’s ability to pay back loans. The IMF said that a large proportion of the banks’ loans and assets were linked to the construction sector which has been particularly hard hit. Kazakhstan’s Central Bank has said that it would be willing to use state funds to support banks.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Nostrum Oil & Gas, the London- listed and Kazakhstan-focused, oil producer hit its lowest level since the beginning of the year on Feb. 9. On its main listing in London, Nostrum’s shares were valued at 436p.
Analysts have said that the drop, which has seen it tumble from a high of 475/$1 since Feb. 1, was linked to a general softening of oil prices rather than any news linked to the company itself.
Instead most analysts have given the company a ‘buy’ rating and raised their target prices. Last month Deutsche Bank, Numis Securities, GMP Securities and
Panmure Gordon all gave Nostrum a ‘buy’ rating and targeted share prices of 535p to 600p.
Credit Suisse downgraded its outlook for Nostrum to a ‘hold’ from a ‘buy’ and targeted a price of 415p to 440p.
At the end of last month, Nostrum said in its annual report that output had just about matched expectations and that it would realise savings in 2017 through a connection to the KTO pipeline.
“(This) will allow us to realise significant savings to exported crude oil transportation costs and continue to seek to reduce costs across the business,” it said.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Kazakhstan are chipping away at personal liberties with their increasingly aggressive crackdown on social media sites, Amnesty International said in a statement. It said independent media has been destroyed and that until recently Facebook and other social media sites had played an important role in facilitating political discourse. Now, though Amnesty said, the authorities were tracking people’s comments and using them in court to incriminate them.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Azerbaijani manat and the Georgian lari jumped by 6.6% and 5.7% in the week to Feb. 9, a sharp jolt against their predominantly downward trajectories.
The manat was valued at 1.82/$1 on Feb. 9, a one month high. The lari was valued at 2.63/$1, a two- month high.
In Baku, some currency analysts said that this was the start of a realignment of the national currency that would see it appreciate back up to around 1.5/$1, a level not seen since mid-2016. They argued that the currency was undervalued and that as oil prices continue to rise, even slightly, and the economy improves, the manat will strengthen.
Other analysts are more cautious and have said that a multi- million dollar one-off transfer from Azerbaijan’s state oil fund to the government has boosted the value of the manat temporarily and that the decline will continue in the longer term.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Austrian police raided the Kazakh biathlon team’s hotel looking for evidence of drug taking on the eve of the World Championships. Kazakhstan wants its sports teams to be taken more seriously and this drug raid will be an embarrassment, doubly so presumably, because of its previously stated determination to host the Winter Olympic Games. Kazakh team officials have denied any wrongdoing.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Kazakhstan arrested Zhanbolat Mamay, the editor of the independent Tribuna newspaper, on corruption charges, once again worrying free speech activists . The press in Kazakhstan has been steadily eroded with a series of high-profile arrest of journalists last year. Tribuna and Mr Mamay had been regarded as one of the few remaining independent news outlets. Free speech activists have described the crackdown as a systematic effort to muzzle critics of the government.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Serbia has agreed to sell its 90.64% stake in railway construction and maintenance firm ZGOP to Kazakhstan’s Zhol Zhondeushi for 3.63m euros, media reported. ZGOP is based in the Serbian city of Novi Sad and employs 290 people and has outstanding debts of $8.2m. In 2012, Zhol Zhondeushi made headlines after it emerged that it had been sold by ENRC to one of the company’s nephew’s for an inflated price.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)