KABUL (TCA) — On December 19, the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the Article IV consultation and completed the sixth and final review under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Completion of this review enables the disbursement of SDR 5.38 million (about US$ 7.4 million). The three-and-half year ECF arrangement for SDR 32.38 million (about US$44.7 million or 10 percent of Afghanistan’s quota in the IMF) was approved by the IMF Executive Board on July 20, 2016, to support the government’s reform efforts and to help catalyze donor funding.

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ASHGABAT (TCA) — Multilateral consultations on the development of the UN Special Programme for the countries of the Aral Sea basin took place in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan on December 19. The meeting was organized in accordance with the final Joint Communique of the Summit of the Founders of IFAS held in Turkmenistan last August and with the Resolutions on “Cooperation between the United Nations and the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea” (IFAS) adopted by the UN General Assembly at the initiative of Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov in 2018 and 2019, the State News Agency of Turkmenistan reported.

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DUSHANBE (TCA) — The amount of money sent home by Tajik labor migrants from Russia in January-September of this year exceeded Tajikistan’s annual budget, Avesta news agency reported.

During the first nine months of this year, Tajik labor immigrants in Russia sent home US $2.49 billion, a 7-percent growth on-year.

According to Tajikistan’s Finance Ministry, the country’s state budget in January-November 2019 amounted to 20.568 billion somoni or more than US $2.1 billion according to the official exchange rate of the Tajik National Bank.

The total state budget of Tajikistan for 2019 from all sources of financing is 23.7 billion somoni or more than US $2.448 billion.

That means that during the first three quarters of this year, Tajiks working in Russia sent home the amount exceeding their home country’s annual budget.

It was earlier reported that remittances from labor migrants abroad account for more than 75 percent of all income of Tajikistan’s population.

NUR-SULTAN (TCA) — Kazakhstan’s real gross domestic product (GDP) growth is projected at 4.0% for 2019, before easing to 3.7% in 2020, according to the World Bank’s latest Kazakhstan Economic Update.

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BISHKEK (TCA) — Ilham Tohti’s daughter Jewher Ilham accepted the 2019 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought during the ceremony in Strasbourg on December 18 on behalf of her jailed father, the European Parliament reported on its website.

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TEHRAN (TCA) — Security chiefs of Iran and Russia have warned about the relocation of remnants of the Daesh Takfiri terror group from their former Middle East strongholds to Afghanistan, Iran’s PressTV news agency reports.

Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, and Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Federation’s Security Council, made the remarks at the second meeting of the Regional Security Dialogue conference in Tehran on December 18.

The event was also attended by top security officials of China, India, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

“Since Daesh’s [Islamic State or IS] defeat in Iraq and Syria, one of the [pressing] security concerns has been the relocation of the defeated Daesh elements from the two countries to Afghanistan,” Shamkhani said.

The purpose behind the relocation is providing the terror group with a base for planning, organizing and carrying out acts of terror against the Central Asian country and its neighbors, he added.

He named terrorism and radicalism as the most serious challenges facing the region, saying the presence of extra-regional forces in the region are fueling such threats.

Russia’s Patrushev said Afghanistan currently hosts between 2,500 and 4,000 Daesh terrorists.

Patrushev said the only way out of Afghanistan’s current woes is direct and unconditional talks between the Taliban and the Kabul government.

He also referred to the increase in drug production in Afghanistan as one of the principal sources of funding terrorism, and said around $600 million of the funds deriving from drug production and sales go to terrorist outfits in the region each year.