Tag Archives: Tajikistan

Turkcell submits bid for TeliaSonera’s Eurasian holdings

ALMATY, FEB. 26 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkcell, Turkey’s largest telecoms operator, said it had submitted a formal offer for TeliaSonera’s share in Fintur, a holding company that owns several stakes in telecoms operators across Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

TeliaSonera owns a 58.55% stake in Fintur. Turkcell owns the rest of the Netherlands-based company. Fintur, in turn, owns stakes in Azerbaijan Azercell, Georgia’s Geocell, Kazakhstan’s Kcell, Uzbekistan Ucell and Tajikistan’s Tcell.

If the sale goes through, the deal will reduce TeliaSonera’s exposure to the region. TeliaSonera will not, though, be able to walk away completely as the Swedish-Finnish company owns, directly and indirectly, 38% of Turkcell.

Other major Turkcell shareholders include Alfa Group and Cukurova Holding.

Many TeliaSonera shareholders had wanted the company to quit the region entirely after being accused of bribing senior officials in Uzbekistan for 3G licences nine years ago. The corruption investigation is ongoing.

In its statement, Turkcell also said it had submitted another offer for TeliaSonera’s directly owned 24% share in Kcell. If the two companies agree on the sale, Turkcell will own 75% in Kcell.

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(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

Tajikistan plans massive war games

MARCH 1 2016, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — With governments in Central Asia increasingly worried about the Taliban, Tajikistan’s said that it will hold one of its largest ever military exercises with Russia, involving at least 50,000 soldiers.

Faridun Mahmadalizoda, a spokesman for the Tajik defence ministry, said that the military exercise will last from March 15-20 in the south of the country near the border with Afghanistan. Soldiers from the Russian military base in Tajikistan will take part in the war games, although the final number hasn’t yet been decided.

Both Russia and Tajikistan have warned of the increasing threat of the Taliban. Last year the Taliban briefly captured the town of Kunduz on the Afghan-Tajik border and this year there have been a number of reports of attacks on power lines running from Central Asia to Kabul. This is especially important as Central Asian states have committed to power and gas export projects to Pakistan and India which involve Afghanistan as a transit state.

And boosting the military is also a popular policy with ordinary Tajiks who worry about stability.

A 35 year-old accountant in Dushanbe said that Tajikistan should ensure stability at any price.

“The government wants to show the Taliban that we have an army, in case the terrorists want to cross the border,” he said, keeping his hands crossed on his chest.

A Dushanbe-based political analyst, who did not want to be named, told The Conway Bulletin’s correspondent in Dushanbe that Russia was pursuing a foreign policy in Central Asia based around boosting its military and playing up fears about renewed Taliban strength.

“The new exercises are first of all a signal to all superpowers that are interested in Central Asia about who exactly is the boss here,” he said.

“It’s also a signal to extremist groups, who have been thinking about moving across the (Afghan- Tajik) border onto the other side of the river in an act of war.”

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(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

Tajik President warns of droughts

MARCH 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon warned people that reservoirs in Tajikistan were low because of a relatively dry winter and that droughts were likely this summer. It’s unusual for Mr Rakhmon to give drought warnings. Tajikistan’s rivers feed downstream Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, meaning that droughts would have knock-on consequences and could strain bilateral relations.

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(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

Baskin Robbins to enter Tajik market

FEB. 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – US ice cream maker Baskin Robbins said it wants to open its first cafe in Tajikistan, although it didn’t say when. Baskin Robbins operates in several countries in the former Soviet Union, including Armenia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. French retailer Auchan opened a store in Dushanbe last year.

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(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

Tethys seals deal with Kazakhstan’s Oilisol

ALMATY, MARCH 2 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) — Guernsey-based Tethys Petroleum said it had now sealed a life-saving financing agreement with Kazakhstan-based Olisol for around $32m, after months of doubt regarding the company’s ability to pay debts and continue its Kazakh and Tajik operations.

The two companies initially reached the deal on Feb. 22 and signed it on March 2, giving Tethys shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange a boost.

Under the deal, Tethys will receive $1m of finance and convert the remaining $5.25m debt facility into ordinary shares. If the Toronto Stock Exchange approves Tethys’ issue of 500m new shares, Olisol will then buy around 181m of these, and own a 42% stake in Tethys.

John Bell, Tethys chairman, said: “Tethys now has a strong in-country strategic partner which has committed to becoming a minority share- holder and who will help the company in its objective to supply the growing energy demand in China.”

Mr Bell and three other board members will step down upon completion of the deal.

“We leave the board having steered Tethys into a company focused on capital efficiency and cost discipline, well placed to become a strong platform for future growth,” he said.

Tethys had been in talks with Nostrum Oil & Gas for a takeover last summer. It later rejected the offer and turned to Kazakhstan’s Olisol.

In January, however, Olisol missed a payment scheduled in an earlier agreement putting the deal in jeopardy. The latest deal confirms that Olisol will in fact go ahead with the purchase and become a minority stakeholder in Tethys.

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(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

Kazakhstan slips towards recession

FEB. 23 2016, ALMATY/DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan verged on acknowledging that its economy may actually shrink this year and a Tajik Central Bank official said it was in talks with the IMF for an emergency loan, more signals that a sharp regional economic crisis was deepening further.

Normally bullish about its own GDP growth predictions, the reconfigured Kazakh government GDP growth estimate of 0.5% is an important sign of the severity of the economic downturn linked to low oil prices. Kazakhstan had earlier predicted GDP growth in 2016 at 2.1%.

“If the cost of a barrel of oil is $40, GDP growth will be 2.1%, but we’ve taken the conservative approach and have assumed that the price of oil will costs $30 per barrel and that GDP growth will hit 0.5%,” journalists quoted Yerbolat Dosayev, the economy minister as saying. Oil is currently around $35/barrel.

Importantly, this new GDP growth estimate is far closer to that of international economist who have said that Kazakhstan’s economy could shrink in 2016. The last time that Kazakhstan’s economy dipped into a recession was in 2008.

Low oil prices and a recession in Russia which has wiped out essential remittance and business investment flows have hit Central Asia hard. The scale and speed of the downturn appears to have wrong-footed leaders, including Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev and his advisers.

They have slashed government budgets and also sold off chunks of state-owned companies, but they haven’t been able to prevent the tenge from losing 50% of its value and inflation rising. Officials are now worried about anti-government protests.

On the southern fringe of Central Asia, Tajikistan, the world’s most remittance-reliant economy, has also been reeling from the impact of the downturn. It has called in the IMF to try to organise an emergency loan.

Jamoliddin Nuraliev, deputy head of Tajikistan’s Central Bank, told the FT that talks with the IMF had begun.

“It’s crisis time,” he said.

Tajikistan has depleted its currency reserves in its Central Bank trying to defend the value of it somoni currency. At the same time, data has shown that the flow of remittances from Russia have dropped by around half.

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(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)

Uzbekistan finishes railway

FEB. 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek officials said that work on a $1.63b railway section in the Fergana Valley had been completed, meaning that trains can now travel from Tashkent without having to pass through Tajikistan.

Although the cost of the 123km track is high, driven up by kilometres of tunnels and bridges that were needed to breach the mountainous terrain, for Uzbekistan cutting out the irritation of having to deal with Tajikistan makes it worth it.

Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have been at loggerheads since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

At its core, Uzbekistan worried about Tajik plans to build hydropower dams across rivers that feed Uzbekistan’s cotton crops. Tajikistan doesn’t like Uzbekistan’s unilateral stance.

This impacted rail traffic, which steadily dropped off.

The World Bank estimated the route will transport 600,000 people and 5 tonnes of freight every year. The project also underlines the financial might of China in the region. It paid $350m of the cost of the project, the World Bank paid $190m and the Uzbek government covered the rest.

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(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)

Belarus frees Tajik opposition

FEB. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Belarus have released a Tajik woman linked to the opposition Group 24, media reported, a move that will irritate Tajikistan’s government. Police detained Shabnam Hudoidodov when she entered Belarus in June 2015. She has now been given refugee status. The Tajik authorities have made chasing opposition groups a priority.

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(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)

Tajik students protest outside EU offices

FEB. 20 2016, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — In a move reminiscent of protests organised by the authorities in Russia to hound government opponents and envoys of countries that the Kremlin had fallen out with, Tajik students demonstrated outside the Turkish and EU diplomatic missions in Dushanbe.

Around 70 students shouted slogans accusing Turkey and EU countries of allowing members of the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) to hold meetings.

“Bring the traitors to the homeland” they shouted. “We came here to express our dissatisfaction with the fact that the traitors are given the opportunity to organize protest meetings (abroad).”

Reports from northern Tajikistan also said a group of students had protested outside the office of the OSCE, Europe’s democracy and human rights watchdog, in Khujand.

Students have previously demonstrated against the IRPT, although they have denied that they had been organised and paid by the government to mount the protests.

This explanation, though, didn’t sit with most analysts’ reading of the demonstrations. In Dushanbe, an analyst who asked to remain anonymous, told The Conway Bulletin’s Dushanbe correspondent that the authorities must have organised the demonstration as no protest could take place without their approval.

“Tajik authorities do not understand that Western countries and Turkey will not be affected by such protests and will not extradite the political refugees,” said the analyst.

Other observers likened the organised protests to Nashi, the youth movement organised by the Kremlin in the late 2000s to hound its enemies. Well funded and single- minded, Nashi gained notoriety for its determined and lengthy demonstrations against foreign ambassadors and democracy advocates.

Last year, the Tajik government outlawed the IRPT, the country’s only formal opposition party. Human rights groups have complained that the government aims to crack down on free speech.

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(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)

Tajikistan raises interest rate

FEB. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s Central Bank raised its key interest rate by 1 percentage point to 9%, its first rise since December 2014. It said it needed to try to protect the value of its somoni currency which has lost around half its value over the past year. A recession in Russia has hit Tajikistan hard, as its economy relies on remittances sent back by workers living in Russia.

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(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)