Tag Archives: Kazakhstan

Kazakh court sentences man to death

NOV. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Almaty sentenced Ruslan Kulekbayev to death for killing 10 people during a shooting spree earlier this year. Like Russia, Kazakhstan has a moratorium on the death sentence and Kulekbayev will instead serve a life sentence. If the moratorium is lifted, though, he will be placed on Death Row. Kulekbayev had previously said that his shooting spree in July, which started with the murder of a prostitute in the southern city of Shymkent, was a personal form of revenge against a society which he felt had rejected him. The court, though, said that he was an Islamic extremist.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Kazakhstan’s KEGOC pays dividend

OCT. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s state-owned electricity distributor KEGOC said it paid a dividend of almost 25 tenge (7 cent) per share, amounting to 40% of the net profit for the first half of 2016. The dividend is almost three times as large as the one distributed last year. At a shareholder’s meeting, KEGOC also decided to expand its board of directors to eight, appointing two new local managers.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Kazakhstan not to consider nuclear plans

NOV. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s energy minister Kanat Bozumbayev said that the government will not consider proposals to build any new power plants for the next seven years because the country’s energy balance is stable. The issue of building a nuclear or coal-fired power plant has been on and off for years in Kazakhstan. It appears that an economic downturn, which has drained the government’s reserves, has finally snuffed out these plans altogether.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

CPC exports from Kazakhstan rise

NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Caspian Pipeline Consortium, an oil transit route along the northern coast of the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan’s oil fields to the Russian port of Novorossiysk, said it increased exports in October to around 4m tonnes, a 24% rise compared to last year. For the first 10 months of 2016, exports have reached 35.3m tonnes. If growth projections continue for the next two months, the Consortium, led by US-based Chevron, Russia’s Transneft and Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigas, will register a record export year in 2016.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Shell cuts costs in Kazakhstan

NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — British-Dutch oil company Shell said it will cut costs across the board, a move that is poised to impact the company’s expenditure in Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan, Shell operates a handful of offshore fields, most notably the giant Kashagan, and is also involved in the Karachaganak gas and condensate field. Sustained low oil prices have hit energy companies’ ability to spend on their upstream projects.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Kazakh C. Bank says rate cut likely

OCT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — In an interview with the FT, Kazakh Central Bank chief Daniyar Akishev said that inflation had slowed to under 12% and that GDP growth would measure around 0.5% this year. He also said that it was likely there would be another interest rate cut before the end of the year, another signal that the Central Bank’s confidence in the economy has strengthened after a rocky 2015.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Kcell’s Q3 revenue drops 13.6% in Kazakhstan

ALMATY, OCT. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kcell, Kazakhstan’s largest telecoms operator, posted a 13.6% drop in revenues for Q3 compared to the same period in 2015, blaming it on tough economic conditions.

Arti Ots, Kcell’s CEO, said, though, that the Kazakh economy now appears to show signs of a timid recovery.

“Kazakhstan has started to see some encouraging signs of macro recovery, with an increase in oil prices. There have also been some signals that consumer price inflation is easing and currency levels are stabilising,” Mr Ots said in a statement.

Kcell’s quarterly revenues, which stood at 36.9b tenge ($111m), were up compared to Q2 but still lower than 2015. The tenge lost 50% of its value in the second half of 2015, destroying people’s confidence in the economy.

Still, Kazakhstan’s competitive telecoms market remains tough.

“We delivered a second successive quarterly increase in service revenue and reported net growth in our subscriber base, although the economic and market environment remained challenging and we saw further year- on-year declines in revenue and profit,” Mr Ots said.

Fierce competition and price cutting have characterised Kazakhstan’s telecoms market recently.

Kcell’s subscribers grew by 1% from January to 9.9m, still below the near 11m that the company had serviced, and expenditure per subscriber declined. In Q3, the average user spent less than 1,200 tenge ($3.6) per month, down 2.7% from last year.

Sweden’s Telia Company owns a 62% stake in Kcell. It wants to sell off its assets in Central Asia after a corruption scandal involving its unit in neighbouring Uzbekistan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Kazakh citizen to face trial for fighting in Ukraine

OCT. 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Aktobe, north-west Kazakhstan, started hearing the trial of Maksim Yermolov, a Kazakh citizen of Russian ethnicity, for fighting alongside Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. He was arrested in Feb. 2015 after returning from Ukraine’s Dontesk region. Kazakhstan has a sizable Russian population in the north of the country and has always worried that many would prefer to separate from Kazakhstan and join Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

InfiNet to launch WiFi in Kazakh trains

OCT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Malta-based Russian telecoms service company InfiNet Wireless said it agreed a deal with Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, the national railway operator, to launch an onboard wireless service in Kazakhstan. InfiNet has already launched a pilot project on the segment between Astana and Borovoye, in the north of the country.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz governments sponsor films to promote themselves

OCT. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Governments of the South Caucasus and Central Asia are sponsoring films to promote their various causes.

This season’s new releases includes a big screen version of Nino and Ali, the classic story of a romance between a Muslim Azerbaijani man and a Christian Georgian woman, which premiered in Baku this month.

It was sponsored by the state linked Heydar Aliyev centre. Leyla Aliyeva, daughter of president Ilham Aliyev, is listed in the credits as an executive producer.

The killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in eastern Turkey during the end of the Ottoman Empire, described as a genocide by

Armenia but denied by Turkey, has also been turned into a Hollywood film starring Christian Bale called The Promise. The reviews, so far, have been mixed.

In previous years Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Georgia have all directly or indirectly sponsored films to promote their causes too.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)