Tag Archives: law

Kazakh President agrees pension reform

JUNE 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – It looks as if Kazakhstan has gently reformed its state pension plan without creating too much of a fuss.

Reform of the generous Soviet-era pension scheme is a particularly thorny issue across the former Soviet Union. Armenia’s government resigned in April because of protests against its proposed changes to the pension scheme and last year in Kazakhstan, a minister resigned after suggesting that women should work for as long as men.

Now though, it looks as if the Kazakh government has gently pushed through the changes it needs to make.

State media reported that President Nursultan Nazarbayev had signed into law a plan to modernise pensions.

The basic premise of the new pension plan, which won’t come into effect until 2016, is that employers will pay the equivalent of 5% of their employees’ salaries to the government. This, media said, will be used by the government to cover a current shortfall in the pension scheme.

So, in total, Kazakh workers will from 2016 effectively contribute the equivalent of 15% of their salary to the government’s pension pot. Employees will pay 10% and companies another 5%.

As the increased pension contribution comes from companies, rather than from workers, it’s unlikely to trigger public protests. Analysts, though, have said that the pension hole has become so big that the Kazakh government may also decide to increase direct employee contributions. That may cause trouble.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 190, published on July 2 2014)

British man jailed for child porn in Kazakhstan

JUNE 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Uralsk, western Kazakhstan, jailed British oil worker Peter Baruch for eight years for child pornography related offences. Police arrested Baruch, who had worked in Kazakhstan since 2009, earlier this year after he was caught paying an underage girl to pose naked for him in his hotel room.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 190, published on July 2 2014)

Kazakhstan imposed alcohol ban

JUNE 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan banned the sale of alcohol between 9pm and 12am every day except in licensed bars and restaurants in an attempt to get people to drink less Alcohol sales are ubiquitous in shops around the country, something officials blame for the high level of drinking.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)

Georgia court rules against law banning foreigners owning land

JUNE 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Constitutional Court appears to have ruled against a controversial law introduced two years ago that banned foreigners from buying land in the country.

The trigger for the reversal of the 2012 law was a case brought to the court by Mathias Huter, am Austrian citizen working for the anti-corruption lobby group Transparency International.

The Constitutional Court ruled in his favour, effectively lifting a moratorium imposed on land purchases by foreigners in 2012. For Georgia’s image as a place to invest, this is good news.

The original ban had been a piece of gimmickry by the United National Movement party (UNM), the ruling party of President Mikheil Saakashvili. There had been a backlash against moves introduced to encourage South Africans and Punjabis to move to Georgia to farm. The idea had been that the immigrants would bring new technology and raise production. Instead the incomers generated resentment.

Displaying an unashamedly populist touch and with a parliamentary election on the horizon, the UNM introduced laws to ban foreigners from buying land.

Although the moratorium has not yet officially been lifted, commentators said that the ruling effectively dismantled it. This is another success for the ruling Georgian Dream coalition which defeated the UNM in a 2012 parliamentary election, a 2013 presidential election and a 2014 local election.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)

Doctors’ salaries to rise in Kazakhstan

JUNE 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Doctors and nurses will receive a 28% salary rise next year, media quoted health minister Salidat Kairbekova as saying. Medical workers have long complained that they are underpaid, especially since a 20% devaluation of the tenge this year. Nurses in Kazakhstan are currently paid $436/month; doctors $620/month.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)

Armenia’s government suggests pension reforms

JUNE 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The thorny issue of pension reform returned to centre stage in Armenia after the new government submitted a proposal that watered down unpopular reforms.

Earlier this year Armenia’s government resigned over the unpopularity of its changes to the pension system which came into effect on Jan. 1. The new law stated that people born after 1973 pay 5% of their salaries into a government scheme, a sum matched by the government.

Thousands of people demonstrated against this plan and the Constitutional Court eventually deemed it illegal and demanded that the new law was amended by Sept. 30.

Armenia was effectively plunged into a political crisis — and the issue of how to reform the out-of-date pension system was still unresolved.

Now the new government of Hovik Abrahamyan is trying to tackle the problem.

It has proposed that the scheme would only be obligatory for public servants who will also have their salaries raised from July 1. It’s a brave proposal and one that may gain traction. Like other states across the former Soviet Union, Armenia needs to reform its overly-generous state pension scheme and also avoid major public discontent.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)

Georgia keeps 700 soldiers in Afghanistan

JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – So eager is Georgia to show off its impeccable NATO credentials that it has agreed to retain one battalion of roughly 700 soldiers in Afghanistan next year.

Irakli Alasania, Georgia’s defence minister, announced the news after meeting NATO officials in Europe. This will effectively halve Georgia’s commitments in Afghanistan. At its peak Georgia had over 1,600 soldiers in Afghanistan supporting NATO missions. Twenty-nine Georgian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.

The symbolism is all important. While most NATO member countries are rushing to extract their kit and soldiers from Afghanistan after a long, costly and frustrating campaign, Georgia has applied to remain with the final contingent of US forces.

Georgia is desperate to join NATO, partly as a bulwark against its former colonial overlord Russia with which it fought a brief war in 2008.

But NATO members are being cautious. Although they have shown support for Georgia’s NATO aspirations, and annual military exercises between Georgian and US forces started on June 9, they have also been wary of embracing it too warmly.

Both US President Barack Obama and Herman Chancellor Angela Merkel said that NATO would not offer Georgia membership at its annual conference in Cardiff in September.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)

Armenia to relax visa regime

MAY 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia is considering dropping visa requirements for US citizens, media quoted deputy foreign minister Sergey Manasarian as saying. Earlier this year Armenia allowed EU citizens to stay 90 days without a visa after the EU relaxed rules for Armenians.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 187, published on June 4 2014)

Kazakhstan wants tax amnesty

MAY 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s parliament passed the first reading of a bill that will give a tax amnesty for people willing to repatriate cash held in offshore accounts.

The amnesty is designed to boost the size of the legal economy.

Ardak Tengebayev, deputy finance minister, said the plan would bring much needed cash into the Kazakh economy.

“We expect a turnover of 2 trillion tenge ($11b) and we hope that this sum will be reintroduced into the country’s economy,” he said

A similar amnesty in 2006-07 pulled in assets of $7b.
Not everybody, though, thought the amnesty was a good idea. Viktor Yambayev, chief of the Almaty Association of

Entrepreneurs, said the plan was designed to help only the country’s rich.

“This amnesty doesn’t affect the majority of the population. Instead, it benefits government employees, monopolist companies, extractive industries,” he told a Bulletin correspondent.

An amnesty may draw in some, much needed, cash into the Kazakh economy but another problem, the divide between the rich and poor, is intensifying.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)

Kazakhstan increases penalties on terrorism crimes

MAY 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh lawmakers have drafted a new bill which will impose a prison sentence of up to six years on anybody who fails to report information on attacks linked to terrorism, media reported. Critics of the bill say a new law could be abused by the security services.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)