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Education Culture Central Asia Economy Uzbekistan UN Women's rights

Samarkand to Host Asian Women’s Forum Next Month

The Asian Women's Forum will be held in Samarkand this May, where participants will discuss the situation surrounding women's rights in the countries of Central and Southeast Asia. The forum will discuss issues related to expanding women's rights, and reducing poverty in the region by involving women in entrepreneurship. Sessions will pay special attention to the role of parliaments in stimulating women's participation in business, gender-oriented budgeting, elimination of gender disparity, and eradication of all forms of violence against women and children. The participants will also focus on modern approaches and best practices in promoting the green economy, the impact of climate change on gender issues in the region -- as well as protection of women's rights and interests. Women are now a driving force in all aspects of life in Central Asia. Addressing the 78th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York, Chairwoman of the Senate of the Oliy Majlis (bicameral parliament) of Uzbekistan Tanzila Narbayeva said that "the attitude towards women has fundamentally changed in the country. Much attention is [being] paid to their education, mastering professions and foreign languages -- as well as to the development of women's entrepreneurship." To date, Uzbekistan has adopted more than 40 legal and regulatory acts to improve the status of women in society, established the National Agency for Social Protection, which, among other things, provides targeted assistance to women and works specifically on the social adaptation of women returned from conflict zones in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kyrgyzstan Turkmenistan Tajikistan Kazakhstan Healthcare Export/import Economy Uzbekistan Food

Central Asians Not Bananas About Bananas

According to the agricultural trade publication East Fruit, Central Asians have little taste for bananas. Kazakhstan has the highest consumption rate but with an average of 4.5 kg of fresh bananas eaten per person, per year, comes nowhere near Uganda where each year, individuals enjoy a whopping 270 kg of bananas. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are fast catching up with Kazakhstan whilst in Tajikistan, the annual banana consumption per head is only 2.3 kg. In Turkmenistan, it appears that many citizens never touch the fruit. Lagging far behind its neighbours, a very modest 160 grams are consumed per head, per year; a figure which according to East Fruit analysts is even lower than that recorded for North Korea. Not surprisingly, countries with the highest banana consumption tend to be those where the fruit is grown and exported and by way of explaining the above data, Andriy Yarmak, an economist in the investment department of the Unites Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) stated, "Such a low consumption of bananas in Central Asian countries is due to the distance of the countries from the port infrastructure, which makes logistics very expensive. In addition, many countries in the region have high tariff and non-tariff barriers that prevent the import of exotic fruits into these regions. The third factor is the relatively low prices of local fruits, especially in the season of their mass production.”

Economy NCOC Export/import Security Oil & Gas Central Asia Kazakhstan Energy

Kazakhstan Likely To Insist on Revisions to Kashagan Oil Contracts

Kazakhstan is demanding compensation for lost profits from the North Caspian Operating Company (NCOC), the consortium that manages the Kashagan oil field, and arbitration claims have risen to $150 billion. Sources close to Kashagan told The Times of Central Asia that this should send the message to western energy companies that Kazakhstan is looking to revise previously signed contracts. While Bloomberg has reported the sum of the claims, citing people familiar with the matter, Kazakh government officials have declined to comment on the situation, claiming that it is a "commercial dispute." In April 2023, proceedings against the companies developing the Kashagan and Karachaganak fields began as part of a dispute over cost deductions from oil-sale proceeds of more than $13 billion and $3.5 billion, respectively. An additional $138 billion claim relates to the calculation of the cost of oil production "that was promised to the government but not delivered by the field developers," according to Bloomberg. The Ministry of Energy has not yet commented on the new claims. It states that the Kazakh authorities seek to maximize profits from their oil-production projects with the participation of foreign investors, but have been relatively flexible in previous disputes with oil corporations. International sources note that Eni, Shell, Exxon and TotalEnergies have already invested around $55 billion in Kashagan, and currently the field produces about 400,000 barrels of oil per day. NCOC investors, led by Italy's Eni, are convinced that production can be increased to 1.5 million barrels per day. NCOC has stated that it acts in strict compliance with the contract. Representatives of Eni confirmed that the Kazakh authorities have applied to the court for arbitration settlement, but did not disclose details. Earlier, Kazakhstan won a lawsuit against the Kashagan consortium which required them to pay $5.1 billion for damage to the environment. Kashagan is developed by the NCOC consortium, which includes the national company KazMunayGas (KMG) and several foreign energy companies: Eni, Shell (Great Britain), ExxonMobil (USA), Total (France), Inpex (Japan), and CNPC (China). Member of the Public Council of the Kazakh Ministry of Energy, Olzhas Baidildinov believes that the sharp increase in the amount of the lawsuit is a signal from the Kazakh side to the consortium to revise the contracts. "In my opinion, it's obvious that Kazakhstan wants to revise the terms of work on large consortia. At the same time, I have proposed many times to exchange the frozen assets of the Russian Federation for stakes in major projects: Tengiz, Karachaganak and Kashagan. There is a nuance here: for example, the shares in Karachaganak and Kashagan are managed by PSA LLP, which is determined by the authorized body, while the share in Tengiz is managed by KazMunayGas. As we see, on Kashagan and Karachaganak there are arbitration claims filed in international arbitration, there is an environmental issue - but on Tengiz they are silent for some reason. This is either KMG's unprofessionalism, because the amount of investment expense is very high, or some other unknown issues that need...

Uzbekistan Investments China Export/import Economy

China Remains Uzbekistan’s Top Trade Partner

In the first three months of 2024, the value of bilateral trade between China and Uzbekistan reached $2.1 billion. During this period, Uzbekistan's exports to China totaled $349.4 million, whilst imports from the People's Republic of China (PRC) reached $1.7 billion. This trade flow reflects a significant surplus in the PRC's trade balance, indicating a steady demand for Chinese goods. According to the Uzbek statistics agency, trade with China accounts for 21.5% of the country's total foreign trade. The number of companies with Chinese investments is steadily growing in Uzbekistan - at the beginning of April, there were 2,501 of them, up 7% compared to the end of last year. At a meeting of the leaders of Uzbekistan and China in Beijing in late January, 2024, Presidents Mirziyoyev and Xi agreed to prepare programs of cooperation in infrastructure development, industrial cooperation, technology transfer in agriculture, and green energy. Last year, Chinese companies commissioned two solar power plants in Uzbekistan with a capacity of 1,000 MW. Mirziyoyev and Xi said bilateral trade turnover between the countries could reach $20 billion annually. The two sides see great potential in the construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan trunk-line railroad. According to various estimates, this multi-modal corridor will reduce the distance of cargo delivery to Europe from China by 900 kilometers, saving 7-8 days of transit time.

China Central Asia Kazakhstan Investments Finance Export/import Economy

Kazakhstan Has Become Main Trade Partner of China’s Xinjiang Province

According to Chinese Customs Service data from the first quarter of 2024, Kazakhstan became the main trade partner of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Since the beginning of the year, Xinjiang has conducted trade with 193 countries and regions of the world. The volume of imports and exports with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in currency terms has increased by 58.8% and 1.9% respectively. The volume of foreign trade originating from Xinjiang since the beginning of 2024 has increased by 42.7% year-on-year and reached about $13.2 billion. That puts Xinjiang in second place in China in terms of trade growth at the provincial level. Imports of agricultural products specifically increased by 36%. According to the General Customs Administration (GCA) of China, last year the trade turnover between Kazakhstan and Xinjiang increased by 63% and reached $20.3 billion. In the first half of 2023 China became Kazakhstan's main trading partner, displacing Russia. China supplies the country with cars, computers and laptops, plastics and plastic products -- and from Kazakhstan imports oil, natural gas, uranium, ferroalloys, mined ores and concentrates and oilseeds.

EU Relations Uzbekistan Economy

Uzbekistan Seeks to Expand Trade Horizons with Europe

- Opinion by Robert Cutler Uzbekistan's economic landscape has been evolving, with announcements of major reforms and international cooperation aimed at economic modernization and increasing its profile in global markets. Its partnership with the European Union (EU) has focused on critical raw materials. At the same time, Tashkent plans to reduce gas exports in favour of expanding petrochemical production and inviting foreign investment into its mining sector. In October 2023, the European Parliament (EP) had endorsed this policy direction by adopting a resolution on Uzbekistan based on a series of broad programmatic documents regarding Central Asia, including a previous Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Uzbekistan on energy cooperation. The EP also favorably mentioned the Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (EPCA) concluded in July 2022 to "modernize" the EU's Partnership and Cooperation Agreement signed with Uzbekistan in 1999. A new MoU signed earlier this month by the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis and Uzbekistan's Minister of Investment, Industry and Trade Laziz Kudratov foresees an ambitious intensification of the partnership. The agreement is touted as a step towards diversifying supply chains to Europe for critical raw materials (CRMs) required for the energy transition. The EU's strategic economic partnership with Uzbekistan The new MoU follows on the EU's 25 October 2023 agreement with Uzbekistan during the Global Gateway Forum. That agreement had confirmed that Uzbekistan, with its reserves of metals such as silver, titanium, and lithium, would join the so-called Critical Raw Materials Forum. However, a critical evaluation of the MoU shows that a lot of hard work will be necessary to realize its plans and promises. In fact, the MoU represents a list of possibilities for cooperation without a guarantee of follow-through. The new partnership focuses on a number of areas of potential collaboration. These may be grouped under three general categories: (1) integrating CRM value and supply chains and their resilience; (2) mobilization of funding; and (3) cooperation on production, research, innovation and capacity building. The MoU itself admits that further specific cooperation is required to establish an operational roadmap that would specify particular joint actions for implementation. This partnership is in line with the EU's Global Gateway Initiative, which seeks to mobilize up to €300 billion in investments by 2027, although the initiative has been criticized for largely being a re-packaging of previously established programs without significant new funding. As far as Uzbekistan is concerned, the big unspoken problem is the need to enhance the country's economic competitiveness in global markets. Uzbekistan's mineral resources exploration Only about 20 percent of Uzbekistan’s territory has been explored. Potential mineral resources are evaluated at US$5.7 billion, with the country’s explored reserves representing about US$1 billion of this amount. This unexplored potential represents a significant opportunity for further enhancing Uzbekistan's potential global competitiveness in the mineral resources sector, but only if transportation logistics can be economically put into place. According to the U.S. Geological Service, Uzbekistan also has reserves of other minerals - such as calcium, kaolin, rhenium and vermiculite...