ALMATY, MAY 12 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) – Revenues at Russian mobile operator VimpelCom’s Central Asia and the South Caucasus operations were sharply down in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015, a sign of the continuing economic malaise that has undermined consumer confidence in the region.

In Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, VimpelCom operates under the Beeline brand. Its customer base in the region shrank by 6% to just above 24m, roughly in line with figures released last month by its rival TeliaSonera.

In Kazakhstan, VimpelCom said that revenue from its mobile operations was just under 24b tenge in Q1, 10% lower than 2015, and that its subscriber base had fallen 4% to 9.2m.

The Kazakh mobile market has become increasingly competitive. Sweden’s Tele2 merged with Kazakhstan’s Altel earlier this year and has been undercutting its bigger rivals.

In its quarterly report, VimpelCom said that prices would stay low.

“Competition remains intense, however, although the company continues to maintain its commercially rational pricing strategy,” it said. “Beeline expects the competitive environment to remain challenging throughout 2016.”

And, other than in Uzbekistan were a new pricing strategy had sustained revenues, it was a similar story in other subsidiaries. In Georgia revenues were down 30% in US dollar terms and in Tajikistan down 27%.

VimpelCom said of the drop in revenue in Tajikistan that this was “mainly due to lower incoming international traffic as a result of fewer migrants living abroad due to the macro-economic slowdown in the region and a weakening local currency.”

A recession in Russia has heavily reduced job opportunities for migrant workers from Tajikistan, hitting remittances and economies in Central Asia.

Earlier this year, VimpelCom paid a fine of $795m after it admitted paying bribes in 2007/8 to access the Uzbek mobile market.