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LONDON (TCA) — China, and to lesser extents Russia, have been unloading coffers full of billions to spread their wings over Central Asia. The par value of the assets which have been taken by the generous-looking fund providers has changed dramatically and regretfully for the worse. That there can be no investments without returns is something the Chinese have known from the start, the Russians are realising that right now, and Central Asian states would realise that soon. Continue reading
ALMATY (TCA) — State officials in oil crisis-hit Kazakhstan have discovered a $20 billion hole on the balance sheet of the National Wealth Fund. Should the state funds be spent this way on, the state coffers will be empty before the end of this decade. A political crisis is looming. In a move to avoid it, the Parliament has applied for snap elections to be held as early as March this year. Continue reading
LONDON (TCA) — Study material publicised over summer last year by the World Travel & Tourism Council on the development of Central Asia’s tourism sector shows disappointing figures in terms of the contribution from the sector to the region’s overall economic development. Opening up the area for larger numbers of tourists would make transportation and accommodation cheaper, and the destination, which has many interesting things to offer, more competitive. Continue reading
BISHKEK (TCA) — The Times of Central Asia presents to its readers the International Crisis Group’s new briefing, Tajikistan Early Warning: Internal Pressures, External Threats, which examines the situation and argues that the country must become a conflict-prevention priority for the international community. Continue reading
ALMATY (TCA) — The year 2015 is bound to stay on people’s memories in Kazakhstan as the year everybody expected the curtain to fall – on people’s heads, that is. The current year, with the country’s national currency held by the fortunes of a ghost that keeps refusing to return into its bottle, unless cash flows are restored to durable levels. To allow this to happen, the government has resorted to what remarkably looks like Russia’s notorious stock-for-loans scheme worked out by the tandem Gaidar/Chubais in the mid-1990s. Will it work out this time? Continue reading
BISHKEK (TCA) — Defending the frontier with Afghanistan has become top priority for the three former Soviet republics bordering it in 2015. Whether that frontier could become a frontline or not depends on how much the other two are ready to contribute and how much stability they can maintain to do so. For Kyrgyzstan, the year 2015 is most likely to go into history as the year of the new revolution that never happened and the remarkable survival and strengthening of its parliamentary rule. It was, remarkably, much due to the personal input of President Atambayev, who is behind the party that has the largest faction in both the previous and the new parliament, that dark prophecies of “destabilisation” and “economic failure” failed to materialize, making Kyrgyzstan’s model go in the direction of the French than e.g. of the British one. Given the geopolitical and economic challenges in the region, this may well be a favourable option. Continue reading
