NOV. 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Islamic Development Bank has agreed to loan Uzbekistan $100m to build extra rural housing, media reported. This is the second major loan by intergovernmental agencies for rural housing in Uzbekistan. In 2011, the Asian Development Bank approved a loan of $500m.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 207, published on Nov. 5 2014)
BISHKEK/Kyrgyzstan, NOV 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — It would seem to be a done deal. Despite parliamentary opposition from an unlikely cast of nationalists and liberals — as well as serious concerns on the street — Kyrgyzstan appears to be primed to join Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus in the Eurasian Economic Union in 2015.
And, of course, Armenia will accede on the same day.
But accession will be problematic for many Krygyz. The Customs Union, from which the Eurasian Economic Union will emerge, mandates higher tariffs on imports from third countries. China’s share of Kyrgyzstan’s import pie is 55%, dwarfing Russia and Kazakhstan’s combined share of 25%.
Prices for goods from cars to household items will go up significantly. Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev has ceded that inflation is likely to jump in the short term after joining the Eurasian Economic Union.
Such price hikes would be hard to swallow anywhere; in a poor country like Kyrgyzstan, they will be punitive. Many people in Bishkek are afraid and everyone from taxi drivers to professionals, is quick to share their concerns.
One Bishkek-based foreign national in the NGO sector underscored this analysis. “Many fear that the lifeblood of Kyrgyzstan’s economy, cheap goods ranging from cars to shower curtains to raw materials imported from China, will either stop flowing due to newly-imposed tariffs or will dramatically rise in price,” he said, preferring to remain anonymous.
Of course, Russia and Kyrgyzstan are bound in many ways. As many as 500,000 Kyrgyz citizens work in Russia, and Russian news media is widely watched in Kyrgyzstan.
There are, of course, silver linings to Kyrgyzstan’s accession. Kyrgyz citizens working in other EEU countries will not need to register with the police for stays of less than 90 nights. Currently, a Kyrgyz citizen staying longer than five nights is compelled to register.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 207, published on Nov. 5 2014)
NOV. 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Acknowledging that hundreds of Kyrgyz citizens have been fighting in Syria for the Islamic State, an extremist Islamic group, Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev told Kyrgyzstan’s Security Council he was determined to defeat extremism. He said Kyrgyzstan was at risk of “Arabisation”.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 207, published on Nov. 5 2014)
NOV. 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Homosexuals in Kyrgyzstan are considering leaving the country when a law banning gay propaganda is adopted, Reuters reported. The so-called anti-gay law is similar to one already adopted by Russia. “The entire atmosphere is getting more threatening,” one man told Reuters.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 207, published on Nov. 5 2014)
OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – At least 19 people have died this year during Uzbekistan’s cotton harvest, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported. Human rights campaigners have long accused the Uzbek authorities of forcing people to work in cotton fields during the harvest.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan will probably issue another sovereign or quasi- sovereign bond next year following its $2.5b Eurobond issue in October, the head of the Kazakh Central Bank Kairat Kelimbetov told Reuters in an interview. Mr Kelimbetov said another debt issue would likely be made as a sukuk, a bond linked to Islamic banking principles.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Houses prices in Kazakhstan rose by nearly 10% last year, media quoted the IMF as saying, one of the biggest rises in the world. The spike was far higher in Almaty. Economists have warned of a bubble in Kazakhstan’s housing market.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek cinemas have been showing a carefully scripted film depicting how the life of the ordinary peasant is happier than those people seeking to emulate Western values in the city, the eurasianet.org website reported. Human rights workers accuse Uzbek officials of using propaganda to control people.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s ministry of sport said that if it was to win the right to host the Winter Olympic Games in 2022 it would expect advertisers and investors to fund around 66% of the costs. Kazakhstan is desperate to host the Winter Olympics but observers have said that it might not be able to afford it.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
URALSK/Kazakhstan, OCT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Finding a taxi in Atyrau, a city of around 200,000 people in western Kazakhstan near its Caspian Sea coast, for the 500-kilometre journey to Uralsk is easy.
During the late morning, drivers gather at the car park in front of the city’s bus station. It costs 5,500 tenge per person (around $30).
Atyrau is a dusty boomtown, relatively charmless. Good then that it is quickly left behind. North of it is the steppe, interminable and yellow-brown.
The horizon stretches in every direction and very little gets in its way.
Small villages hide down secondary roads. Entrepreneurs sell melons at a few crossroads. There are roadside burial tombs, some standing alone and others in circular formations.
For more or less the entirety of the drive there is a curved line of trees to the east. Sometimes this line of trees is directly adjacent to the road and other times it hovers far in the distance. These trees hug the banks of the Ural River, which snakes down from the Ural mountain range before emptying into the Caspian Sea.
The river is the dividing line between Europe and Asia. Just over halfway to Uralsk the landscape, though still mainly scrub, begins to liven up a bit. Previously, the only trees to be seen were grouped together in unhealthy-looking planned groves.
Very slowly, these spindly man-made groves yield to more natural looking clusters. Slopes give some shape to the terrain over the final 50km of the journey. And then, 10km, outside Uralsk there is a big hill, the first the flat horizon has been broken, after which the city makes itself known to its new arrivals.
Settled by Cossacks and full of ornate cathedrals and brightly-painted wooden houses, Uralsk is a world away from Astana’s contemporary triumphalism.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)