Tag Archives: Kazakhstan

Afghan authorities arrest Kazakh national

JAN. 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Afghanistan have arrested a Kazakh national on suspicion of having links to terrorism, media reported quoting the Afghan foreign ministry. Media reports said that the man was from Atyrau and that he had been arrested in the northern part of Afghanistan. Kazakhstan has been trying to dampen an increase in recruitment by the radical IS group but it is rare for Kazakhs to be arrested in Afghanistan for links to Islamic extremists.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Tengiz will create 20,000 jobs, says Kazakh ministry

JAN. 30 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The $36.8b expansion of the Tengiz oil field announced last year will create 20,000 jobs, Kazakhstan’s labour ministry said in a statement. Labour minister Birzhan Nurymbetov said that 18,000 of those jobs would be given to Kazakhs. This job creation is vital in Kazakhstan which has seen mass job cuts over the past couple of years because of the tight economic conditions.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

H&M still on track to open store in Kazakh city

JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — H&M, the Swedish fashion retailer, still intends to open its first store in Kazakhstan despite a fall in profit last year, its CEO Karl-Johan Persson said during its full-year results presentation. Mr Persson said that the rising value of the US dollar was one of the main drivers of the drop in profit. Last year H&M said that it would open its first store in Almaty. This is important because analysts have been worried that an economic downturn that has hit the region would hit companies’ plans.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Carmaker in Kazakhstan starts exports to China

FEB. 1 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian carmaker AvtoVAZ has started exporting its Lada 4×4 to China from its factory in Kazakhstan, the life.ru website reported quoting an official at the Asia Auto factory in the east Kazakh city of Ust-Kamenogorsk. Asia Auto is one of the biggest car manufacturers in Kazakhstan. The Kazakh car making sector has been hard hit by the economic downturn.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Kazakh president opens Student Olympiad

JAN. 29 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev opened the 28th Winter University Olympiad in Almaty, an event that he said was the biggest sporting event ever held in Kazakhstan. The Olympiad is important to Kazakhstan as a way of promoting itself on the international stage. This year it also hosts EXPO-2017 in Astana, an event it has been planning for years.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Kazakhstan-focused Nostrum hits 2016 targets

JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In its full year results, Nostrum Oil & Gas, which focuses on Kazakhstan said that it had just beaten its expected output with an average daily output of 40,351/barrels of oil equivalent (boe) compared to an anticipated 40,000 boe. It said that the final quarter of the year had been the best with 44,708 boe.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

CPC says to expand in Kazakhstan

JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Caspian Pipeline Consortium plans to invest $150m in 2017 in expanding the capacity of the pipeline that pumps oil from western Kazakhstan around the northern tip of the Caspian Sea to Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, its general director Nikolay Gorban told media. The expansion plan will boost the pipeline’s capacity to 67m tonnes per year, up from 52m tonnes. This is important because CPC is a key export route for Kazakhstan and especially for its important Tengiz field.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Telia CEO promises sale in Kazakh, Tajik, Uzbek markets

JAN. 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The CEO of Swedish mobile operator Telia, Johan Dennelind, said that he was confident that he would be able to sell off the company’s remaining assets in its Eurasia region this year. Interest in Telia’s regional asset which include Azercell, Geocell, Ucell, Kcell and Tcell have been light. A corruption scandal in Uzbekistan, linked to a 2008 bribe, triggered the sale.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Kazakh authorities are intimidating protesters

ALMATY, FEB 2, 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in western Kazakhstan are trying to intimidate workers into giving up their hunger strikes, the Eurasianet website reported.

The Eurasianet report quoted workers as saying that a breakdown in trust with the authorities was pushing them towards a potentially violent confrontation.

“We cannot allow another Zhanaozen,” Eurasianet quoted a lawyer for a detained union leader as saying. Zhanaozen is the town in western Kazakhstan where police and strikers clashed in 2011. At least 15 people died.

Several hundred oil workers have been refusing to eat in west Kazakhstan in protest over the closure of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions, an umbrella organization, by a court in Shymkent at the beginning of the year. The hunger strikers’ de facto leaders, Amin Yeleusinov, and Nurbek Kushakbaev were arrested on Jan. 20

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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Kazakh President fires vice-PM Tasmagambetov

ALMATY, FEB. 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a surprise move, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked his longtime ally Imangali Tasmagambetov as deputy PM and sent him to Moscow to be Kazakhstan’s ambassador to Russia.

The shift from central government to the diplomatic corps is a humiliating end to Mr Tamagambetov’s political career.

He had been a PM, mayor of both Almaty and Astana and also been the minister of defence. The 60-year-old Tasmagambetov is popular with ordinary Kazakhs and had been touted by analysts as a potential successor to Mr Nazarbayev as president.

Mr Nazarbayev gave no reason for Mr Tasmagambetov’s demotion.

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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)