MARCH 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Officials from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan met to defuse a border row that had threatened to bubble over into conflict earlier this month. After the meeting, Uzbek forces pulled their soldiers and tanks away from the contested areas that they had moved into a week earlier.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kyrgyz government approved exploration plans laid out by Australian miner White Cliff Minerals for its Aucu gold project. The agreement extends the exploration licence for White Cliff to 2020. Aucu, located in west Kyrgyzstan, holds an initial inferred resource of 4.83m tonnes of gold. Despite friction with its biggest foreign investor, Centerra Gold, at the Kumtor gold mine, Kyrgyzstan is still trying to woo foreign companies.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kyrgyz Central Bank continues to buy US dollars in the currency market because demand for foreign currency is shrinking and, the Bank’s chief Tolkunbek Abdygulov told a press conference, people and businesses need improved som liquidity. The Central Bank bought around $62m in March.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Authorities in Dubai detained Adil Toiganbayev, son-in-law of former Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, who is wanted by Kyrgyzstan’s authorities for various crimes, including fraud, embezzlement, and tax evasion. Mr Toiganbayev’s alleged crimes are related to activities he conducted through his Aalam Services company before a revolution forced Mr Akayev to quit as president in 2005. Previously, Toiganbayev had been briefly detained in Moscow in 2014. It is still unclear if the UAE will collaborate with the Kyrgyz prosecutors.
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(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)
MARCH 18/24 2016, OSH, Kyrgyzstan (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan sent two armoured personnel careers and solders its border near the Kyrgyz city of Osh as tension escalated in southern Kyrgyzstan ahead of local elections.
Senior officials from Kyrgyzstan’s government called the Uzbek military manoeuvres a provocation and President ALmazbek Atambayev cancelled a trip to Tashkent set for June to attend a conference of the region’s quasi military group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
“The Kyrgyz people are not the ones who will be kneeling, fearing [Uzbekistan’s] forces,” Mr Atambayev said at a press conference.
This appears to be an escalation of tension between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Kyrgyzstan argues that Uzbekistan’s actions violate a bilateral agreement against the militarisation of the border.
Large portions of the 1,300-km border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are undefined, dotted with enclaves and exclaves, where Kyrgyz and Uzbek people live. There are sizable Uzbek and Kyrgyz minorities in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, respectively.
Now, access to some border crossing points has been restricted. Officials in southern Kyrgyzstan reported that some anti-Uzbekistan demonstrations have broken out.
Kyrgyz PM Temir Sariyev appealed for calm.
“Nobody forbids protests but let us not be enemies from within, we must be united. Without unity we cannot solve foreign policy issues,” he said.
The unrest also comes at a sensitive time for Kyrgyzstan. It is holding regional elections in five southern cities, including Osh, on March 27.
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(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)
MARCH 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s GDP was 7.8% lower in the first two months of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015, the country’s statistics agency said. The drop was linked to a sharp fall in gold exports which make up the bulk of Kyrgyzstan’s exports. Gold and silver production was down over 50%, it said. The data shows just how vulnerable Kyrgyzstan is to fluctuations in its core export.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 14 2016, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s President Almazbek Atambayev fired Nursulu Akhmetova, one of the most prominent women in Kyrgyz finance, as head of the Kyrgyz-Russian Development Fund barely a year after she took the job.
The $500m Kyrgyz-Russian Development Fund was set up last February to smooth Kyrgyzstan’s entry into the Eurasian Economic Union.
It was supposed to hand out grants and cheap loans to businesses to help them make the transition. Instead, in the seven months since Kyrgyzstan became a Eurasian Economic Union member, the Kyrgyz- Russian Fund has become a source for frustration for Kyrgyz businesses.
News reports quoted Mr Atambayev saying at her sacking: “I’ve spoken about this a few times with the Prime Minister. The Fund has not developed well, and the Government did not make it to work well.”
Kyrgyz businesses have accused the fund of changing the rules and making cash available only to large companies rather than small businesses.
Under Ms Akhmetova, the Fund had insisted that to qualify for loans or grants, businesses had to take out a minimum loan of $3m, contributing 20% itself.
For Mr Atambayev, the sacking is a personal disappointment. Before getting the job, on a three year contract, Ms Akhmetova had been head of the analytical department of the Presidential Administration. She was also its deputy director. Mr Atambayev would have worked with Ms Akhemetova personally.
Her replacement was named as Kubanychbek Kulmatov, a former mayor of Bishkek.
Analyst Emil Juraev said that the Fund still had a role to play if it can regain credibility under new leadership.
“The Russian-Kyrgyz Development Fund, if used well, can certainly have a significant positive effect on economic development of Kyrgyzstan,” he said. “However, so far there have been many reasons for concern about the ability of Kyrgyzstan to effectively and freely manage the funds.”
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan will host the main military exercise for members of the Russia and China led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) later this year. Media said that the military exercise, involving soldiers from all the SCO’s members will be the biggest held in Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are also members of the SCO which has an economic, social and military agenda.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) -The economic downturn continues to hit Central Asia and the South Caucasus with British Airways now cancelling its London-Baku service.
But whether BA needs to quit the route altogether is questionable. Airlines keep a diversified portfolio of route because it is near impossible to second guess which routes will be profitable in a few year’s time.
The decision took many by surprise because of the strong presence of British business in Azerbaijan, most notably BP.
As oil prices fell dramatically in the past 20 months, airline companies have rallied on cheap fuel, but have also struggled to maintain links to countries negatively affected by the crisis.
In 2012, British Airways cut its route to Yerevan, the following year it cancelled regular flights to Bishkek and Tbilisi. Last October, the company quit its London-Almaty route.
The crisis, aside from hitting government budgets and people’s wallets, has contributed to cutting off further the region from the West.
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Editorial from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz PM Temir Sariyev said that 16 new hydropower stations would be built for a total of $160m, adding 188MW of power to the national grid. This is important as Kyrgyzstan is committed to boosting its power output to hit domestic demand and also to feed the CASA-1000 project which will send electricity to Pakistan via Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)