Tag Archives: Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyz MPs want to impose gold export tax

JUNE 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – MPs in Kyrgyzstan’s parliament have called for the introduction of a new tax on gold exports, media reported, pitting themselves, once again, against the country’s largest foreign investor.

The Kumtor gold east of the country is Kyrgyzstan’s single biggest industrial asset and parliamentarians said that its exports needed to be targeted to raise extra revenue for the national budget.

Centerra Gold, listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, owns Kumtor. The Kyrgyz government is a minority owner in Centerra. It has been fighting to increase its stake in the company and to gain more control over Kumtor itself. Earlier this year, a Kyrgyz PM resigned after failing to win concessions.

Mirlan Bakirov, an MP for the opposition Onuguu (Progress) party, proposed a 20% gold export tax to be instated at the beginning of 2016, while Alla Izmalkova of the Social Democratic Party argued for a similar tariff to start in 2018.

Official data showed that in 2014, Kyrgyzstan exported 85,000 tonnes of gold, an increase of around 36% from mine in the 2013.

But the issue of taxing gold exports has been passing around the Kyrgyz parliament for years without ever being resolved.

Earlier in June, Kozhobek Ryspayev, member of the Committee on Fuel and Energy, said an export tax would harm the mining industry. Valentin Bogdetsky, member of the Board of the Kyrgyz Mining Association similarly stated: “The imposition of an export duty on gold is not a solution to the problems between the industry and the government.”

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

UN chief challenges Kyrgyzstan on 2010 fighting

JUNE 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a stopover in Bishkek as part of a wider tour of Central Asia and its capitals, UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon said Kyrgyzstan should hold an impartial investigation into the death of 400 people during fighting in the south of the country in 2010.

Most of the people killed during fighting around the city of Osh in south Kyrgyzstan in 2010 were Uzbek.

“Kyrgyzstan has ambitious plans to promote interethnic harmony and to protect the rights of all, including minorities,” Reuters quoted Mr Ban as saying at a press conference in the city.

“But it’s important for these policies to be put into practice. Root causes must be addressed fully and impartially investigated and prosecuted.”

The inference is clear. Any Kyrgyz investigations since 2010 have been skewed to clear ethnic Kyrgyz of blame for the fighting which drove thousands of ethnic Uzbeks over the border into Uzbekistan.

Although lying inside Kyrgyzstan’s borders, Osh and the surrounding towns and cities have always been heavily populated by ethnic Uzbeks.

Human rights groups have accused Kyrgyzstan of a cover up over how the fighting in 2010 started by convicting local Uzbek leaders for starting the fighting.

Relations between the two communities living around Osh continued to be strained and the peace fragile.

Mr Ban was visiting Bishkek as part of a Central Asia tour, his second since 2010.

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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Kyrgyz health minister worries

JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Doctors and other health workers will leave Kyrgyzstan for better paid jobs in Kazakhstan and Russia now that the country has joined the Kremlin- led Eurasian Economic Union, media quoted Kyrgyz health minister Talantbek Batyraliyev as saying. Kyrgyzstan’s health service is already in a precarious states.

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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Kyrgyz GDP increases

JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s GDP was 6.9% higher at the end of May than it was a year earlier, the Kyrgyz national statistics office said. The main driver of this growth was the Kumtor gold mine, Kyrgyzstan’s largest industrial project.

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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Kyrgyzstan bans RHD cars

JUNE 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A law in Kyrgyzstan banning the import, registration and maintenance of righthand-drive cars came into force. The bill was signed into law earlier this year. Traffic experts in Kyrgyzstan have said that righthand drive cars are involved in more accidents than lefthand drive cars.

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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)

Kyrgyzstan passes anti-NGO bill

JUNE 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament passed a preliminary reading of the so-called Foreign Agents Bill which will, basically, make it harder for local NGOs to receive money from Western organisations. The bill is similar to one passed by Russia in 2012.

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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)

EBRD to invest $70m in Kyrgyzstan

JUNE 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to Bishkek, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) president Suma Chakrabarti said that it planned to invest $70m in Kyrgyzstan to boost its investment climate. Mr Chakrabarti highlighted the need for investment in local currency and capital markets.

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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)

CSTO members meet in Tajikistan

JUNE 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Defence minister from CSTO member states flew into Dushanbe for their annual meeting, set to begin on June 4. The Collective Security Treaty Organisation includes Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)

Kyrgyz government cuts GDP growth rates

JUNE 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s government has slashed its economic growth forecast for 2015, Reuters reported.

It said that rather than the bullish prediction of growth at 6.2% in 2015, up from 3.6% in 2014 because of increased output at the Kumtor gold mine, growth would actually slow to 2%.

This reduced economic growth rate will also increase the size of its budget deficit, Reuters reported. This will rise to 5.7% of GDP from 3.3%.

Reuters said the new figures had been noted on Kyrgyz government documents.

Kyrgyzstan’s economic woes are shared by other countries across the region. It is strug- gling to deal with the fall-out from a downturn in Russia’s economy triggered by the doublehit of a sharp fall in oil prices around the world and also the impact of sanctions imposed by the West on Russia for its meddling in Ukraine.

Remittances from workers labouring in Russia are one of Kyrgyzstan’s main currency earners. The World Bank has said that this is likely to be down by 40% on 2014.

At a meeting with reporters in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s economy minister Oleg Pankratov explained the severity of the downturn.

“Our main partners are in deep crisis due to the rouble’s plunge … and economic sanc- tions,” she said, according to Reuters.

“Our migrants have started to transfer less cash.”

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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)

Traffic rising in Kyrgyzstan

MAY 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Traffic on Kyrgyzstan’s roads is growing by about 5% a year, Oleg Pankratov, Kyrgyzstan’s minister of economy, said. Mr Pankratov also said he wanted to introduce some way of charging foreign cars a fee for using Kyrgyzstan’s roads.

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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)