NOV. 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan said it will spend $35m upgrading fuelling facilities at the Navoi airport in the centre of the country. This is important because Uzbekistan wants to turn the airport into the main cargo hub for Central Asia and the general Asia-Europe route.
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(News report from Issue No. 161, published on Nov. 20 2013)
NOV. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Around 100 protesters blocked a road in Samarkand, Uzbekistan’s second city, to protest against shortages of electricity and gas to their homes, media reported. Public protests are extremely rare in Uzbekistan, one of the most repressive countries in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)
NOV. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — For Uzbek citizens to protest on the streets, a problem must be severe. Very severe. The last time that a major public protest took place was in the town of Andijan, eastern Uzbekistan, in 2005. Police opened fire on the crowd killing dozens, possibly hundreds.
It’s not surprising then that a shortage of gas or electricity in Uzbekistan has failed to trigger street protests of the sort you would expect in other countries. This, though, changed in Samarkand on Nov. 5 when, media reported, roughly 100 residents blocked a road to protest against the shutdown of gas and electricity supplies to their homes.
The protest, which successfully pushed the local authorities into re-starting gas supplies to residents’ homes (at least for now), is important because it underlined just how political and tense the issue has become in Uzbekistan.
It appears, simply, to be a clash of interests between the Uzbek leadership and ordinary citizens.
The Uzbek government wants to meet lucrative contracts to supply gas to China. This means, according to local media, depriving some Uzbek households of supplies.
And it looks set to worsen. Uzbekistan currently supplies 10b cubic metres of gas a year. China wants to build another couple of pipelines to boost imports from Uzbekistan to about 25b cubic metres a year.
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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)
NOV. 12 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The EBRD raised its GDP growth outlook for Uzbekistan this year to 7.7% from 7.5%, media reported. Inflation, though, it said, would grow at 11% in 2013, one of the quickest rates in the region. Uzbekistan is cagey about releasing economic data.
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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)
NOV. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Malaysia sentenced three Uzbeks, two women and one man, to death after convicting them of trying to smuggle drugs into the country. Officials caught the three Uzbeks, one a pensioner and the other two unemployed, carrying 10kg of methamphetamine in their luggage at Kuala Lumpur airport.
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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)
NOV. 7 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Uzbek Prosecutor-General’s office said it was investigating the alleged kidnapping last year of an employee of Gulnara Karimova, eldest daughter of Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov. Observers said the case may be designed to heap more pressure on Ms Karimova who is embroiled in a battle to keep assets and influence.
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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)
NOV. 12 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — RIA-Novosti, a Russian news agency connected to the Kremlin, quoted the chairman of the Uzbek Senate, Ilgizar Sobirov, as saying that Uzbekistan would, potentially, be interested in joining the Russia-led Customs Union. Uzbekistan has previously shown little interest in joining the trade bloc.
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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)
NOV. 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to stem fuel shortages, Uzbekistan has agreed a deal with neighbouring Turkmenistan to import oil to Uzbek refineries, media reported quoting a subsidiary of the Uzbek state-run energy company Uzbekneftegaz. Oil production in Uzbekistan has been decreasing and its three refineries are running below capacity.
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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)
OCT. 31 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — With Uzbekistan being a secretive sort of place, grabbing titbits of genuine economic data to analyse is important.
This is where Russia’s Central Bank has helped out. It said on Oct. 31 that labour migrants from Uzbekistan sent $1.6b back home in the second quarter of the year, that’s April, May and June.
For the poor of Central Asia, Russia is the obvious place to head to for work. It is the former colonial master, speaks the same language and needs plenty of labourers.
In the first quarter of 2013, Uzbek migrants sent $1b back home. Most of the migrants, like many from Central Asia, work in the construction industry in Russia. Altogether, it looks as if migrant workers send roughly $5b to $6b back to Uzbekistan every year which equals about 10% of Uzbekistan’s total GDP.
Uzbekistan doesn’t publish remittance data, making the Russian Central Bank data so important.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
OCT. 31 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Islam Karimov met with Meng Jiangzhu, a member of China’s ruling politburo and cochair of the Uzbekistan-China inter-governmental committee, in Tashkent. China has become increasingly friendly with Uzbekistan over the past year.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)