Tag Archives: Kyrgyzstan

Designing a yurt-shaped greenhouse for Kyrgyzstan

BISHKEK, JAN. 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tilek Toktogaziev has a vision. The 27-year-old Kyrgyz businessman wants to make farming more efficient and he wants to do it by turning the yurt, Kyrgyzstan’s national icon, into a greenhouse.

Or at least construct greenhouses in the shape of a yurt.

“We often copy models of greenhouses from the Koreans or the Dutch,” he told The Conway Bulletin (Jan. 6). “But they have their own climatic conditions. Even in cold times Kyrgyz people have survived in yurts.”

He has set about designing a greenhouse that will look and function like a yurt – the circular, heavy felt tent-like structure used by nomads to live in during the summer when their horses graze in lush valleys under snow-capped mountains.

Mr Toktogaziev has been building greenhouses since 2012, but it was only in 2016 that he thought of the yurt-shaped greenhouse.

“Out of season, local greenhouses cover 10% of market demand in Kyrgyzstan, whereas 90% of vegetables come from China and Uzbekistan,” he said, indicating market potential.

For now, though, Mr Toktogaziev wants to find foreign investors to help propel his concept onto the world market and also to educate Kyrgyz on the benefits of the greenhouse. He already has local investors and says the first greenhouse will be built in 2017.

It’s an uncertain road. What he is certain about, though, is keeping the national identity of the greenhouses.

“Local thermofelt (produced in a village near Bishkek) will be used to cover yurt-shaped greenhouse roof in nighttime to keep warmth,” he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)

Kyrgyz security services start monitoring Facebook

JAN. 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s security services have started monitoring 45 people who have criticised President Almazbek Atambayev on Facebook, the Eurasianet website reported. Eurasianet said that it had seen a memo which the Kyrgyz National Security Committee had written to an MP outlining its plans to watch the people. Human rights groups have previously criticised Kyrgyzstan for clamping down on free speech.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)

China embassy attackers in Kyrgyzstan hide in Turkey

JAN. 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The suspects behind the attack on the Chinese embassy in Bishkek last year are in hiding in Istanbul, Kyrgyz media quoted Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador to Turkey as saying. A car bomb killed two people working at the embassy on Aug. 30 2016. The authorities have blamed Uighurs from China’s western Xinjiang Province. Turkey has not commented.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)

Data shows Kyrgyz trade with EEU has fallen

BISHKEK, JAN. 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s trade with other members of the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) fell 18.6% in the first 10 months of 2016, the Russian news website gazeta.ru quoted an unnamed source at the Kyrgyz statistics committee as saying.

This data, if confirmed when the official statistics are released, highlights Kyrgyz officials’ concerns that joining the EEU has had a negative impact on its trade. They have said that the EEU favours the larger countries and has hampered Kyrgyzstan’s trade with China.

“In the first 10 months of 2016, trade turnover, the import-exports of Kyrgyzstan, with the EEU member states comprised of $1.575b,” the unnamed source said. “Compared to the same period in 2015, this figure was 81.4%, in other words it was a drop of 18.6%.”

The data also goes against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s insistence that Kyrgyzstan’s trade turnover has increased since it joined the EEU.

Last month in a very public show of his frustration with the EEU, Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev delayed signing a key customs agreement between the five member states at a ceremony in St Petersburg.

Kyrgyzstan joined the EEU in August 2015 but its businessmen and MPs have complained of excessive bureaucracy and barriers to trading with China that the EEU has imposed.

Many analysts said Kyrgyzstan had been coerced into joining the EEU.

The other EEU member states are Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)

Chinese miner operates in Kyrgyzstan

DEC. 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Chinese company Full Gold Mining produced its first batch of concentrated gold at its Ishtamberdy gold deposit in Kyrgyzstan’s southeast region of Jalabad, the Kyrgyz government said. The project had stalled since 2011 because of a series of anti-mining protests and demonstrations against excessive Chinese control over Kyrgyzstan’s industry.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 311, published on Jan. 6 2017)

Kyrgyz President visits Uzbekistan

DEC. 24/25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev visited Tashkent, a symbolic trip which highlighted the vast improvement in relations between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan since Islam Karimov died in September. The neighbours have been close to war but since Karimov died, Uzbek officials have appeared to change their previously antagonistic stance towards Kyrgyzstan over disputed border areas.

Frustrated Kyrgyz President delays signing EEU customs code

BISHKEK, DEC. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev delayed signing a new Eurasian Economic Union customs code, media reported, a very public signal of his frustration with the Kremlin-led group.

The code, drawn up to replace an earlier one agreed by the EEU’s predecessor the Customs Union, and a deal on foreign trade policies were supposed to have been signed by member states at a meeting in St Petersburg in a setpiece end-of-year summit.

Instead, Tigran Sarkisyan, head of the EEU’s executive unit, was forced to issue a statement explaining the delay.

“All documents were signed except the first issue on the agenda, a statement of the development of EEU trade policies, which three countries signed but Kyrgyzstan refused to sign, and the second document, the Customs Code, which three countries signed but Kyrgyzstan refused to sign,” media quoted him as saying.

Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko was absent from the meeting.

Hours later the Eurasian Economic Commission released another statement which said that Mr Atambayev had apparently signed the deals. There was no explanation on what had triggered Mr Atambayev’s change of mind.

Kyrgyzstan joined the EEU in August 2015 but has complained that the rules favor Kazakhstan and Russia and that it has lost business since joining. Local businessmen have also said the mountain of red tape has increased costs.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 311, published on Jan. 6 2017)

Turkey accuses Kyrgyz man for Reina attack

JAN. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Radical Islamist recruitment from Central Asia came under the spot- light after the authorities in Turkey accused a Kyrgyz man of killing at least 39 people at a nightclub in Istanbul on New Year’s Eve. The attack was claimed by the extremist IS group. The Turkish authorities later retracted the accusation and instead said that they were hunting for an ethnic Uighur who may have spent time in Kyrgyzstan. Security experts have said that Central Asia is a prime recruiting group for IS.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 311, published on Jan. 6 2017)

Kyrgyzstan deal to sell 4,000 donkeys to China sparks anger from animal rights activists

BISHKEK, DEC. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz plans to export 4,000 donkeys to China have angered animal rights protesters who have said that the animals are transported in inhumane conditions and are often killed for gelatin extracted from their skins which is then used in traditional Chinese medicine.

The BBC reported that Chinese importers bought the donkeys from a village near Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan for an estimated 3,000-4,000 soms ($43-57) per donkey.

China is a major importer of donkeys. It sources many from Africa.

The donkeys are often used to work the land but are also butchered for their skins. Chinese medicine producers want the gelatin from the donkeys’ skins.

A couple of years ago, donkey meat was discarded in Kyrgyzstan, after hundreds of donkeys had been killed and skinned.

Animal rights activists want the export of donkeys to China to be stopped or at least regulated. Business leaders in the region though said that the donkey trade had become a profitable export for poor farmers.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 310, published on Dec. 23 2016)

Uzbekistan develops ties with Pakistan

DEC. 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — On a trip to Pakistan, Uzbekistan’s deputy PM Ulugbek Rozukulov agreed with Pakistani business minister Khurram Dastgir Khan to set up a joint business council to improve ties between the two countries. Since former president Islam Karimov died in September, Uzbekistan has worked to improve relations with its neighbours. Pakistan has also invested more time into developing ties in the Central Asia region. It is part of both the CASA-1000 project to import electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and also part of the TAPI gas pipeline project to import gas from Turkmenistan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 310, published on Dec. 23 2016)