DUSHANBE (TCA) — Construction of new hydro power plants on the Panj River in Tajikistan would help provide irrigation water for around two million hectares of farmland in downstream Central Asian countries and in Afghanistan, Avesta news agency reported with reference to Tajikistan’s energy-sector authorities.
TASHKENT (TCA) — Azerbaijan’s state energy company SOCAR and Uzbekistan’s national oil and gas company Uzbekneftegaz plan to establish a joint venture to introduce energy-saving technologies to the Uzbek oil and gas industry during the first six months of 2016, AzerNews reported.
BISHKEK (TCA) — The Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) operations—comprising approvals of loans and grants, technical assistance, and co-financing—reached an all-time high of $27.15 billion in 2015, an increase of about 19% over the $22.89 billion in 2014, the ADB said.
BISHKEK (TCA) — The Times of Central Asia presents to its readers Stratfor’s Global Intelligence, a weekly review of the most important events that happened in the world — from Europe to Middle East to Russia to Central Asia to Afghanistan to China and the Americas.
BISHKEK (TCA) — The Financial Times has included Kyrgyzstan in the list of countries recommended for travel in 2016, along with Sri Lanka, Peru, Brazil, Cuba, and South Africa.
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.
