Tag Archives: Kyrgyzstan

Stock market: KAZ Minerals, Central Asia Metals

OCT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Mining companies dominated the news this week from stock markets selling shares in Central Asian and South Caucasian companies.

London-listed KAZ Minerals lost 30% in one week before rising slightly to 91p. What was striking, though, was that the trade volume surpassed 25m shares, a weekly turnaround that was only seen during a surge in August and during another sharp fall in mid-January.

Central Asia Metals was essentially stable this week in London at around 155-158p.

Toronto-listed Centerra Gold fell again. This week, the Kyrgyzstan- focused mining company lost around 6% to end the week at 7.29 Canadian dollars.

Central Asia-focused oil companies showed mixed results. Nostrum Oil & Gas shares lost around 4% this week, down to 462p. This fall was linked to the ongoing saga with Tethys Petroleum on the takeover.

Kazakhstan-focused Roxi Petroleum performed well this wekek, as it climbed back to 10p, an 18% surge in seven days, triggered by the positive interim results for H1 2015 it published on Sept. 29.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Uzbek-Kyrgyz trade halves

SEPT. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In Jan.-July 2015, trade turnover between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan halved to $78.4m compared to the same period in 2014, according to Kyrgyz customs data. The figure shows the impact of the economic downturn.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Currency: Kazakh tenge, Kyrgyz som

SEPT. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Last week’s decision by the US Federal Reserve Bank not to modify interest rates was welcomed across Central Asia and the South Caucasus, where currencies performed well.

The Kazakh tenge, the Georgian lari and the Kyrgyz som all recouped 2% against the dollar and a timid 1% improvement was also noted in Armenia and Azerbaijan. Markets are still weak, however. Had it not been for Central Bank interventions for millions of dollars in Kazakhstan ($620m in one week), Georgia and Kyrgyzstan (around $30m each), their currencies would have kept falling.

By the end of the week, the Kazakh tenge was trading up 2.5% against the US dollar at 264/$1, the Kyrgyz som was up 2% at 69/$1 and the Georgian lari was up 2.4% at 2.39/$1.

Also, and this is interesting, a study from researchers at the International Monetary Fund found that the lack of confidence in domestic currencies and ingrained behaviours have hindered any policy of de-dollarisation across Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Russia blocks fish to Kyrgyzstan

SEPT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia’s food safety agency, seized 48.5 tonnes of Chinese canned fish being transported via railway to Kyrgyzstan from Estonia. The cargo was sent back to Estonia because its certificates did not comply with Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) rules. Canned fish from China is shipped to Estonia before being sent to Central Asia. The seizure highlights just how complicated transporting products across the EEU has become.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Kyrgyzstan to establish energy holding

SEPT. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan will establish a national energy holding next year, Kubanychbek Turdubayev, Kyrgyz minister of energy, said in a statement. The government has said that it hopes that a single energy holding would improve efficiency.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Markets: ADB’s growth outlook for the South Caucasus and Central Asia

SEPT. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank published an updated Outlook for the economies of Central Asia and the South Caucasus, downgrading growth prospects across the region.

The ADB set growth for 2015 at 3.3%, down from an earlier forecast of 3.5% and the organisation says inflation will hit 8.1% this year, triggered by the latest devaluing of the Kazakh tenge and the Kyrgyz som. In Kazakhstan, in particular, “the new exchange rate is expected to dampen consumption and investment further,” the ADB said. A worrying outlook.

The trend for lower capital investments across the region, however, could be reversed in 2016-17, according to the ADB. The governments will play a major role as drivers of future growth as the main source of investments for years to come.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Kyrgyzstan endures Manas airport funding headache

SEPT. 21 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — When the US military quit its airbase outside Bishkek in July 2014, ambitious officials dreamt of turning Manas airport in a Central Asian transport hub that would connect Europe and South-East Asia.

A year on and this dream is still very much that. There have been no major investments.

In an interview with the Bulletin at his office in central Bishkek, Nursultan Belekov, the 24-year-old deputy head of Manas Airport’s investment department, explained his frustration.

“We have worked hard to attract Russian, Turkish and Chinese partners, but no one has contributed yet,” he said.

Earlier this year Rosneft rowed back on an earlier promise to invest in the airport, perhaps making Manas a victim of a sharp economic downturn hitting the region.

Mr Belekov, who is standing for parliament in October’s election, had a different spin on Rosneft’s pull out from Manas.

“They offered to invest $1b dollars, but we were needed to refuse because Manas airport is a strategic object for Kyrgyzstan’s independence, and a 51% stake cannot go to a foreign company,” he said. Manas needs around $1.2b investment.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Biometric data enables Kyrgyz people to vote

SEPT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Most Kyrgyz migrant workers will not be able vote in the parliamentary election because they have failed to submit biometric data to the authorities before the deadline. The Zamandash opposition party told RFE/RL that only around 10,000 out of 700,000 Kyrgyz living in Russia will vote in the Oct. 4 election.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Kyrgyzstan focuses on agriculture

SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Agricultural projects outnumbered any other sector for applications to a $1b Russian-Kyrgyz development fund for small and medium enterprises in Kyrgyzstan. The data highlights Kyrgyzstan’s predominantly agricultural economy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Comment: This election is a poor advert for democracy in Kyrgyzstan

SEPT. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Fourteen parties will appear on the ballot for voters in Kyrgyzstan to elect from on Oct. 4, yet from social media to taxi chatter, the complaint is of a lack of genuine choice. The menu contains the familiar set of several dozen politicians, from several parties that sound all too similar.

What the complainers ask for may be too much, one might say. The uninspiring choice may actually be the only thing that contemporary democracy can offer. Politicians seek reelection, parties try to cater to as wide a spectrum of voters as possible, and none of them accept the risks involved in running on sharply defined and innovative policy platforms.

But wait. Even by the modest standards of latter-day democracy, Kyrgyzstan may be scoring too low.

That 75% of sitting deputies are seeking reelection may be normal, but it cannot be normal when an enormous number of them are on tickets of new parties, often very different from their original parties.

There is a tendency in Kyrgyz politics for the protagonists to swap parties regularly and for new parties to emerge, confusing the electorate and cementing the feeling that the election is more about personalities than policies and issues.

None of the parties has seriously criticised President Almazbek Atambayev. No party is anything close to pro-Western or critical of Kyrgyzstan’s over-reliance on Russia. All are happy about the Eurasian Economic Union.

All are anti-corruption, pro- government-efficiency, pro- national-unity and a list of other goods, with no detail on how to attain them.

In an election which, thus, seems to be all about personalities, all the main parties are parading decidedly mixed lists of candidates. Popular politicians next to infamous ex- officials; progressives next to conservatives; wealthy business owners next to underpaid teachers; law enforcement leaders next to those with criminal past; young candidates next to old.

Thus, the voters are facing a long ballot with little variety and more than a bit of confusion.

Lacking genuine choice, they are left to vote either for the President’s Social Democratic party, to keep things the same, or for a party linked to their clan or family.

These growing pains – if this is what they can be called – are not good signals for a more democratic Kyrgyzstan.

By Emil Dzhuraev, Lecturer in politics at the American University of Central Asia, Bishkek

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)