JULY 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has said he wants to update Turkmenistan’s foreign investment laws, media reported. Media reports didn’t give specific details of his proposed changes but they did say that the changes would be designed to attract more foreign investment.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JUNE 24 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In an open letter on its website, a Kazakh law firm acting for the local subsidiary of Japanese car manufacturer Toyota said that it wanted makers of counterfeit goods carrying its brand to be prosecuted.
The open letter is important as it acts as a warning. The car market in Kazakhstan is booming, fresh figures showed that new car sales continued to increase last year, and Western brands are looking to establish themselves.
The market is growing, the technical know-how to build the cars is in place but protection for Western brand’s intellectual property rights can often be lacking.
Toyota, which also produces cars under the Lexus brand, has previously flagged up counterfeit goods in Kazakhstan as a problem. The latest letter highlights that point.
For Toyota, defending its brand is especially important as it was only in February that it signed a deal to start producing cars at a plant in Kostanay, north Kazakhstan.
The issue of brand protection is also increasing important for Kazakhstan on a wider level.
As more and more Western companies with well-established brands enter the country and as WTO membership nears, Kazakhstan’s officials, legislators and prosecutors have to ensure that robust brand protection is in place.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 140, published on June 24 2013)
JUNE 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Perhaps responding to criticism, Tajikistan has introduced laws both strengthening legislation against money laundering and increasing punishments for people convicted of washing cash, media reported. Experts had said Tajikistan’s anti-money laundering legislation was one of the weakest in the world.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 140, published on June 24 2013)
JUNE 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government wants to modernise its pension system. Among other things this means making women work five years longer until they are 63, in line with men.
The logic appears simple but the issue has hit a nerve and triggered a rare show of ground-level dissent.
But, if the public dissent was rare, the government’s climb-down has been little short of extraordinary.
On June 11 Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, ever watchful for an opportunity to flourish his man-of-the-people credentials, sacked labour minister Serik Abdenov who had been charged with pushing through the pension reforms.
Mr Abdenov had cut an increasingly forlorn and isolated figure. Audiences have openly laughed at him, he has stumbled over his words when trying to explain the reforms and a protester has pelted him with eggs.
But the climb-down didn’t stop there.
Mr Nazarbayev has also said that the entire pension reform needs to be looked at once again and suggested that the changes should come into effect in 2018 and not in 2014. Since Mr Nazarbayev’s intervention state-influenced media have been putting out stories suggesting that the pension reforms have gone too far.
In Kazakhstan, this is code for a rare government U-turn.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
JUNE 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kyrgyz parliament is considering adopting a law to chemically castrate convicted paedophiles and rapists once they have left prison, media reported. A handful of countries, including Russia and some parts of Europe, already inject rapists with a chemical that reduces their testosterone levels.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
MAY 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — London is the global centre of dispute resolution.
Its courts, solicitors, barristers and the law itself are respected around the world attracting businesses and individuals who need to settle commercial disputes.
Now, a study of documents over the past five years has shown that Kazakhstan-focused legal disputes generated the second highest number of cases, the London-based Independent newspaper reported. Dispute resolution in London can be used as a rough gauge of a country’s economic activity.
According to the report, only the United States has been the focus of so many litigation issues.
Of the 705 litigation cases covered since 2008 by the Commercial Court, the business dispute arm of the High Court in London, 86 related to Kazakhstan. Russia, which has had more high-profile and expensive cases, recorded 75 cases.
The biggest Kazakhstan-oriented case to pass through the British courts in the past five years was the dispute involving Mukhtar Ablyazov who was accused of defrauding BTA Bank, where he had been chairman, of billions of dollars.
Ablyazov is currently on the run, having been charged with perjury last year. Earlier this year, the High court ordered Ablyazov to re-pay $2b.
According to the Independent’s report, the BTA/Ablyazov dispute case generated 11 individual cases, employing at least 50 solicitors.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 135, published on May 20 2013)
APRIL 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A man protesting against a proposed increase in the retirement age for women hurled two eggs at the Kazakh minister for labour, Serik Abdenov. The Kazakh government wants to raise the retirement age for women to 63 from 58.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government announced that it had lifted a moratorium on granting more licences to subsoil developers, underscoring the sector’s importance for Kazakhstan’s future development.
Minerals and energy have been the backbone of Kazakhstan’s economic boom since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and that is not likely to change.
Global demand for metals may have dropped but lifting the ban, which was introduced in 2008 to allow a smooth introduction of new tax codes, will still spur foreign investor interest in Kazakhstan. The country simply holds too much untapped mineral wealth to be ignored.
And the Kazakh minister for new technologies and industry, Asset Issekeshev, immediately invited foreign companies to apply for licences at a tender in May.
Most of the $170b foreign investment in Kazakhstan since 1991 has been in the energy sector although senior government officials told Reuters the emphasis now would be on metals and non-hydrocarbon minerals.
To further encourage this, the government suggested that miners may be exempt from VAT.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 132, published on April 22 2013)
APRIL 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Tbilisi arrested three men for holding a radioactive isotope that could be used to make a so-called dirty bomb, media reported. Police did not give the nationalities of the men. The Georgian authorities have previously arrested people in Tbilisi for selling elements needed to make a radioactive bomb.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 130, published on April 5 2013)
MARCH 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Kyrgyzstan sentenced Maxim Bakiyev, the son of ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, to 29 years in jail in absentia for signing off millions of dollars in illegal deals. Bakiyev fled to London after a coup in Kyrgyzstan in 2010. He is currently on bail, facing a series of fraud charges in the US.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 129, published on March 29 2013)