JUNE 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – After a six month delay, Kyrgyzstan approved a business plan for Centerra Gold’s Kumtor mine in the east of the country. The approval narrowly beat a deadline set by Toronto-listed Centerra Gold which had threatened to close the mine for the year. Kumtor is Kyrgyzstan’s single biggest industrial operation.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
JUNE 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Inflation in Kyrgyzstan will almost certainly double this year to around 8%, Tolkun Abdygulov, head of the Central Bank, said. Increasing inflation could agitate people in Kyrgyzstan. Mr Abdygulov also said that the Central Bank had spent $198m trying to prop up the Kyrgyz national currency.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
JUNE 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The number of migrants entering Russia for work has fallen by 20% this year because of strict new rules, Konstantin Romodanovsky, head of the Russian Federal Migration Service, said. This is important to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan whose economies rely most heavily on remittances from Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
BISHKEK/Kyrgyzstan, JUNE 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Dressed in a colourful striped shirt Narynbek Moldobayev is on first name terms with all the staff at this Italian restaurant in central Bishkek.
Moldobayev is the archetypal Kyrgyz MP and rather charming with it. Having moved seamlessly between three political parties in the last five years, his politics can be described as fluid — a common characteristic in Kyrgyzstan.
And it is this fluidity amongst the Kyrgyzstan’s political class, that’s important to examine as it is undermining, many say, Central Asia’s first parliamentary democracy.
An MP who supported former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, ousted in a revolution in 2010, Moldobayev is now part of an opposition group that split from the nationalist Ata-Jurt party.
“I was never a nationalist,” he said as he tucked into a bowl of salad.
Moldobayev is 60-years-old and sentimental about the Soviet Union. He praises Russia unreservedly but is suspicious of China and its “desire to influence” the Central Asian energy sphere.
Moldobayev, primarily a businessman who made his money in the construction and oil industries, seems unbothered by the values of the party whose list he has paid his way to be on through donations. “Kyrgyz politics is built on personal gripes,” he said wearily, explaining why some parties in the parliament have effectively disintegrated.
Many say Kyrgyzstan’s political system might be more representative if it ditched party lists in favour of geographic constituencies. In the parliamentary vote in 2010 five parties took less than 40% of the vote creating a fractious, and many argue weaker, parliament. Moldobayev disagrees with this viewpoint, citing potential for “dangerous localism”.
There may be another reason, though. Since few people actually know who Moldobayev is and he might not win a seat.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
JUNE 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The appointment of Tokon Mamytov, a former spy, as head of Kyrgyz state gold mining champion Kygyzaltyn could be good news for investors.
Kyrgyzaltyn acts as the government’s representative in partnerships with Canadian Centerra Gold, operator of the country’s major gold mine, Kumtor, and a number of other Joint Stock mining projects including Altynken (Chui province) and Makmal (Jalal-Abad province).
Starting out in the Soviet-era KGB, Mr Mamytov has spent his adult life in security and defence postings, a background some argue doesn’t qualify him to run a mining company.
But others see Mr Mamytov’s appointment as signal that change is coming.
Kubat Rahimov, a local economist, said Mr Mamytov’s background in the security services, was a good thing as Kyrgyzaltyn’s previous leaders were young western-educated types that “played by Asian rules”. This was a thinly veiled reference to corruption.
Mr Mamytov will not have full control over the sector — licenses are issued via the State Agency of Geology and Mineral Resources — but the position makes him the government’s man on the ground across projects accounting for 97% of the country’s gold production.
Mr Mamytov will need to draw on experience from his last post — managing conflict on the Kyrgyz-Tajik frontier as a deputy PM in charge of security, defence and border issues — in his new post. Along with corruption, community conflict is the biggest problem facing the Kyrgyz mining sector today.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
JUNE 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s PM Djoomart Otorbayev said the country would be a member of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union by the end of 2014, Itar-Tass news agency reported. Mr Otorbayev’s comments were another indication that Kyrgyzstan is steadily moving towards Russia’s sphere of influence.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in southern Kyrgyzstan have evacuated 35 families from the enclave of Barak, roughly half its population, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Barak is surrounded by Uzbek territory and the exodus is another indicator of growing tension between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Kyrgyzstan sent Uchkunbek Tashbayev, the former head of the state agency for geology and mineral resources, to prison for five years for corruption and abuse of office, media reported.The sentence of yet another senior official is a reminder of just how endemic corruption is in Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Perhaps playing into Uzbekistan’s hands, the shortage of gas in Osh has triggered anger towards the central authorities in Kyrgyzstan.
Under a Soviet engineered system, Uzbekistan supplies Osh and other cities in south Kyrgyzstan with gas. It cut supplies on April 14 because it said that Kyrgyzstan was not keeping to its side of a bilateral arrangement.
Uzbek officials have also declined to negotiate with their Kyrgyz counterparts, leaving people living in the south without supplies.
And anger is brewing.
Osh has seen a few demonstrations but protests have now broken out in Bishkek. People protesting against the lack of gas in Osh merged with others demonstrating against Russia’s Gazprom’s takeover of KyrgyzGaz in April and the government’s drive towards the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. Police were forced to break the protest up but any ground-swell of anti-government feelings in Kyrgyzstan can have serious implications for the government.
It is not surprising that Uzbekistan is being a difficult neighbour. Uzbekistan has been highly critical of Kambar-Ata-2, the Kyrgyz hydroelectric project the Kremlin agreed to finance. In 2012, Uzbek President Islam Karimov said upstream dams such as Kambar-Ata-2 could trigger wars between upstream and downstream countries.
Gazprom’s acquisition of KyrgyzGaz is also a threat to Uzbekistan as it gives the Kyrgyz energy network more firepower. Gazprom has talked also of a north-south gas pipeline in Kyrgyzstan that would cut Uzbekistan out of its supply chain. This, though, is some way off and it will not end Osh’s gas crisis in the short run.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Talks between Kyrgyz and Tajik officials over their border dispute will resume on June 16, media reported quoting a senior Kyrgyz official. This is important as altercations between villagers have intensified this year around the Tajik-Kyrgyz border. In May a mass brawl injured several people.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)