Tag Archives: Turkmenistan

Council of elders in Turkmenistan set for October

JULY 11 2017 (The Bulletin) — Turkmen media said that President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov had called for a Council of Elders to convene on Oct. 9. The Council of Elders consists of 600 men over the age of 70 from across Turkmenistan’s five regions. It is officially an advisory body for the President but in effect is used to rubberstamp his decisions, often major government matters. The President decides on when to call a Council of Elders, although it usually takes place every year.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

Comment: Turkey’s coup and its impact

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ISTANBUL, JULY 16 2017 (The Bulletin) — Finally we’ve made it to this finest of cities. It’s taken us a week since leaving Edinburgh to get here – via Yorkshire, Hampshire, Lord’s cricket ground, Warsaw, Prague (the airport only) and lovely, louche Odessa.

But at turns brooding and majestic; playful and frustrating, Istanbul is a place that commands love and loyalty. My wife and I are heading east on book research duty, hers not mine, and there was no reason to linger. Still, I insisted. It’s good for the temper, if not the waistline, to spend days here eating, drinking and strolling.

Coincidentally we are in Istanbul for the first anniversary of a failed coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Erdogan. A rebel army unit captured the bridge over the Bosphorus and tried to arrest Erdogan. They failed and the ramifications have been great.

Erdogan blamed the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen for organising the coup and police have arrested at least 50,000 people for being ‘Gulenists’. This purge hasn’t been confined to Turkey. Pressure has been applied to Turkey’s allies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus too. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have been happy to comply, others less so, although Georgia has started to acquiesce.

With a resurgent Russia and a powerful China, Turkey’s influence in the region has waned since the 1990s but the coup anniversary is a reminder that events in Istanbul reverberate across the Anatolian plateau, over the Caspian Sea and on to the Tien Shan mountains.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

State salaries and pensions to rise by 10% in Turkmenistan

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JULY 8 2017 (The Bulletin) — Apparently looking to bolster his support from ordinary Turkmen during a sustained economic downturn, President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov ordered state pensions and salaries to be increased from Jan. 1 2018. Analysts have said that the Turkmen economy is under increasing pressure and that inflation is rising fast.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

Turkmen President wants faster import substitution programme

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JULY 12 2017 (The Bulletin) — At a government meeting focused on the economy, Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov told his ministers to speed up the diversification of the economy and especially an import substitution programme that it has been working on. The media report of the meeting betrays, perhaps, Mr Berdymukhamedov’s nervousness at the state of the Turkmen economy. It has been hit by a regional economic decline.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

Turkmen President sacks finance minister

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JULY 11 2017 (The Bulletin) — Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov sacked Mukhametguly Muhammadov as finance minister in yet another public dressing down for a senior government official. Mr Berdymukhamedov has sacked almost his entire government over the past year in what analysts have said is an attempt to deflect blame for Turkmenistan’s stuttering economy.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

Gas trade increases between Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan

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JUNE 27 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbekistan will increase imports of gas condensate from neighbouring Turkmenistan to feed its new refinery at Bukhara, media reported quoting state-owned Turkmengas. There have been no public announcements on an increase in gas to Uzbekistan and no numbers have been released on how much gas will be sent to Uzbekistan from Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan has been looking to broaden its gas purchasing clients.

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(News report from Issue No. 335, published on July 3 2017)

LG & Coke sponsor Games in Turkmen capital

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JUNE 27 2017 (The Bulletin) — Korea’s LG International and Coca- Cola will be the main sponsors for the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (AIMAG) to be held in Ashgabat in September, a sports media website reported. AIMAG is seen by Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov as an important prestige occasion and is the first major international sports event that Turkmenistan has hosted.

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(News report from Issue No. 335, published on July 3 2017)

Turkmenistan Airlines buys another Boeing

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JUNE 29 2017 (The Bulletin) — Turkmenistan Airlines has taken ownership of another Boeing 737- 800 airplane, the state news agency reported, in line with a previously arranged deal. In 2014, before the collapse in gas prices that underpins its economy, Turkmenistan ordered six new Boeing aircrafts under an ambitious plan to revamp Turkmenistan Airlines.

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(News report from Issue No. 335, published on July 3 2017)

Turkmen economy is ailing

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JUNE 21 2017 (The Bulletin) — Turkmenistan’s economy is stalling and its prospects looking increasingly bad, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported in a podcast.

Pulling accurate information from Turkmenistan is complicated with most analysts describing GDP growth data permanently showing a 6% expansion as both unrealistic and misleading. Instead they are increasingly following revenue export data which measured $5b last year against $9b in 2014. This gives a rough indication of how much money the Turkmen government, driver of the economy, has to spend.

Energy prices collapsed in 2014, hitting the Turkmen economy particularly hard as it is reliant on gas sales to China.

The US-funded RFE/RL said that the an informal barter economy had grown as cash was in such short supply.

“I would call this a great Turkmen Depression,” said Farrukh Yussupov, head of the RFE/RL Turkmen service. “People are not getting paid for months and at the bazaars not only do you see fewer buyers but today we are reporting that there are no sellers either.”

RFE/RL also said that President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov had ordered regional governments to meet their own expenses as central government couldn’t afford to prop them up.

The official rate of the Turkmen manat is 3.5/$1 but sources on the RFE/RL report in Ashgabat said that on the Black Market the manat is trading at around 7/$1.

Earlier this year, Mr Berdymukhamedov ordered his government to cut generous Soviet- era subsidies as a way of saving money, a certain sign that the economy was in trouble.

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(News report from Issue No. 334, published on June 26 2017)

Turkmen economic growth to be lumpy, says IMF

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JUNE 15 2017 (The Bulletin) — In a statement, the IMF said that Turkmenistan’s economy would grow at an uneven rate over the next few years with inflation remaining at “moderate” levels while the economy dealt with various external pressures linked to its over-reliance on gas exports as a revenue earner. It put both GDP growth and inflation at around 6% over the next couple of years.

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(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)