OCT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A journalist documenting forced labour practices in east Uzbekistan said his office had been burnt down in an act of sabotage, media reported. Dmitiry Tikhonov also said that files with data on a number of specific cases appear to have been stolen from his office in Angren.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Norway arrested Jo Lunder, the former CEO of Russian telecoms company VimpelCom, in connection with alleged bribe paying in Uzbekistan, further damaging the reputation of foreign telecoms companies operating in Central Asia.
A few days earlier, Norway’s industry minister, Monica Maeland, sacked Svein Aaser as Telenor’s chairman over the corruption probe. She said that Telenor had been handling an internal investigation into the case badly.
“I no longer have confidence in Telenor’s chairman,” Ms Maeland said in a statement.
VimpelCom is alleged to have paid millions of dollars in bribes to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of President Islam Karimov, for mobile licences in Uzbekistan. Swedish TeliaSonera is also being investigated for bribe-paying.
In October, Telenor said it wanted to sell its 33% stake in VimpelCom, effectively cutting the company’s operations in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Photographs and anecdotal evidence from Uzbekistan showed that queues for petrol at service stations are growing longer and longer. A collapse in the value of the Uzbek sum has hit the Uzbek economy hard. Uzbekistan also has a shortage of refining shortages.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Corruption is still rife in Uzbekistan despite the introduction of the country’s first anti-corruption plan earlier this year and a so called anti-corruption coordination commission, the OECD said in a new report.
In its report, the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, said that Uzbekistan needs to criminalise corruption and promote public sector honesty and integrity.
Corruption and bribery are considered deeply embedded in Uzbekistan. The OECD, an intergovernmental organisation, report is evidence that little has changed despite some headline policies.
In effect, the OECD, said that Uzbekistan’s new laws were window dressing.
In its exhaustive 116 page report, the OECD said that Uzbekistan needed to focus on a handful of key policies if it was committed to beating corruption.
These involved conducting anti- corruption surveys regularly and publishing the results; improving the independence and integrity of the law enforcement agencies; developing e- government tools.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian oil and gas company Lukoil completed the construction of two electric substations at a major gas field in Uzbekistan. Lukoil is the operating company at the Gissar gas field in the south of the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 2/3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – On stopovers in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan during his whirlwind tour of Central Asia, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that he had “robustly” raised human rights issues with the countries’ leaders privately despite shying away from criticising his hosts in public.
Human rights groups had urged Mr Kerry to make a major statement on the state of human rights in both Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, countries they regard as among the most oppressive in the world.
Instead, Mr Kerry, in public at least, spoke about joint security concerns and about the need to keep democracy at the forefront of the region’s governance.
“In Central Asia and elsewhere people have a deep hunger for governments that are accountable and effective,” he was quoted as saying.
“We should have no doubt that progress in democratic governance does lead to gains in every other field.”
Perhaps Mr Kerry’s most important objective on his trip of the region was to reassure the leaders’ of the various countries that the United States was still interested in Central Asia despite quitting an air base outside Bishkek and appearing to cede influence to Russia and China.
Mr Kerry met Uzbek President Islam Karimov in Samarkand and later Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov in Ashgabat. Mr Kerry was the first US Secretary of State to visit Ashgabat since James Baker in 1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Media quoted Kerry at the end of his tour of Central Asia, summing up his most important aims.
“What we want to see is not a struggle between China and Russia and the United States in a zero-sum game,” he said. “What we want to see is a Central Asia that claims its place as an engine of growth at the heart of a modern and dynamic Asia.”
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The tenge finally broke through the 300/$1 level this week. People in Kazakhstan watched their currency lose ground against the US dollar on Thursday and Friday, while the Central Bank, under a new leadership, refrained from any intervention. The official exchange rate reached the record-breaking level of 310/$1 late on Friday, an 11% fall in one week.
The Kyrgyz som lost 1% of its value in one week, hitting 70/$1 on Friday.
Other currencies in the region remained stable throughout the week.
In a rare statement, the Uzbek Central Bank said it would let the sum devalue faster in 2015, compared to 2014. The official exchange rate, currently at 2,692/$1, showed a 10% fall in the first 10 months of the year. But this is about half the unofficial rate. On the black market, $1 can be purchased for as much as 5,900sum, according to the dollaruz.com website.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
OCT. 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US government has blocked Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) , a South Korean firm, from selling a dozen T-50 Golden Eagle training fighter jets to Uzbekistan for $400m, the Korea Times newspaper reported.
Washington was reportedly concerned that technology used in T50s, which was co-developed by KAI and the US’ Lockheed Martin a decade ago, could be handed over to Russia.
“KAI has been in negotiations with the Uzbek government to export the supersonic trainers, but the US government is opposing the deal, citing possible technology leakage and diplomatic policy,” the Korea Times source said.
Uzbekistan is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation but not the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, a Russia-dominated military bloc of former Soviet countries.
Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer told the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the US’ worries were understandable.
“The decision has nothing to do with Uzbekistan. But Uzbekistan is a country in the Russian sphere of influence,” he was quoted as saying.
If confirmed, the ban on the sale of the T-50s to Tashkent could overshadow a planned visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry to Samarkand on Nov. 1.
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)
ALMATY, OCT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Central Asian countries fared strikingly well in the latest Doing Business report published by the World Bank, possibly reflecting a drive to attract investment to fight off worsening economic conditions across the region.
The World Bank report singled out Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as among the ten most improved countries in the world. Georgia fell from 15th to 24th place but its overall score was deemed an improvement over last year’s. All other countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus improved their ranking.
According to the World Bank’s assessments. Kazakhstan, 41st in the rankings, made registering a property transfer faster and easier, and Uzbekistan made it easier to start a new business and access credit. It was ranked at 87th, up 54 positions from last year.
In an interview with the Bulletin, Valentina Saltane, Private Sector Development Specialist at the World Bank said Kazakhstan had reformed seven key areas.
“The only area that needs real improvement is cross-border trade,” she said. “Uzbekistan adopted three major reforms, one of which , starting a business, dates back to 2013, but became accessible to private businesses only at the end of 2014.”
Other analysts also said that Kazakhstan had been working hard to speed up various technical reforms.
Alex Nice, Eastern Europe editor at the EIU, said: “Kazakhstan has announced a range of technical reforms, to try to improve the investment climate, in response to the economic slowdown. So it’s not surprising it has moved up the rankings.”
But Mr Nice also sounded a note of caution. He said that developing countries, Kazakhstan included, hire consultants just to advise them on how to move up the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ survey.
“Kazakhstan invests a lot in promoting its image abroad, and may well have hired consultants to advise it on how to achieve a move up the rankings,” Mr Nice continued. “That doesn’t mean that the challenges to doing business in Kazakhstan have fundamentally changed.”
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)
OCT. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek government has ordered more coal imports to match growing demand, media said. According to the website fergananews.com Uzbekistan will import around 330,000 tonnes of coal this winter. Regionally, Uzbekistan is a major gas producer, but it prefers to export most of the gas to earn foreign currency.
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)