Kazakhstan
Tokayev reappoints the heads of the Constitutional Court, the election commission and the audit chamber, and tells 8 new ambassadors Kazakhstan has to hold together
President Tokayev signed decrees on Friday appointing Elvira Azimova chairwoman of the Constitutional Court, Nurlan Abdirov chairman of the Central Election Commission and Alikhan Smailov chairman of the Higher Audit Chamber, the posts all 3 already held, Akorda's releases carried by Tengrinews and Zakon.kz show. In the afternoon he received the credentials of 8 ambassadors at the Palace of Independence and told them the doors of the state would stay open to them "because we need to hold together in this very restless and turbulent world".
The WMO writes the region's water year down: reservoirs below normal from Kyrgyzstan to Afghanistan, the Aral basin's rivers in decline, glaciers with one of their 3 worst years on record
The World Meteorological Organization's State of Global Water Resources 2025, published on Thursday, records inflows to the reservoirs of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan below or well below the 1991 to 2020 normal, a decline in flow across the Aral Sea basin, and the glacier balance of Central Asia in the year to September 2025 among the 3 most negative on record. Globally, 2021 to 2025 was one of the driest runs for river flow since observations began in 1991. Every water instrument the region has put on paper this month is priced to a river the report says is running short.
Washington's new tariff law counts Russian gas by volume, and Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are closing in on its top five
The House cleared the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act for the President on Wednesday with a 262 to 159 vote. It lets him put duties of up to 100% on all goods from the 5 largest buyers of Russian crude or gas. By the volumes on the record, Astana and Tashkent are fourth and fifth on the gas list, with about 1 billion cubic metres or less between them and the buyers behind.
A Turkish shipowner takes the Black Sea drone war to the ICC over a bosun killed off Novorossiysk; Russia claims 3 more freighters hit in Chornomorsk
The owner of the Turkish-flagged Reyhan Sari, 12 of its crew and the family of Savas Cakar, the 54-year-old bosun killed when a drone hit the ship off Novorossiysk on 22 July, have lodged a complaint at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, DenizHaber reported on Thursday morning. Twenty-two minutes later Russia’s defence ministry said its drones had struck 3 dry-cargo ships and a ferry in the port of Chornomorsk.
Kazakhstan’s budget lost 1.7 trillion tenge to the oil it did not pump, and 2027 is written at 480 tenge and $70
The first vice-minister of national economy, Azamat Amrin, put a figure on the year’s lost barrels as the 2027 to 2029 draft went to the Kurultai: 1.7 trillion tenge less for the budget, about 200 billion of it in export duty on the barrels that did not leave, on a production plan cut from 105 million tonnes to 96. The new draft assumes 480 tenge to the dollar against the 540 in the current law, and a $70 barrel against $60.
The tenge closes at 444.88 to the dollar, its strongest since May 2024, while the budget law is written at 540
The dollar's weighted average at the close of day trading on KASE was 444.88 tenge on Wednesday, down 2.8, its lowest since May 2024, Tengrinews reported at 15:44. For the day the National Bank's official rate is 447.88. The 2026 budget law assumes 540 tenge to the dollar and $60 oil.
Seoul's declaration puts the summit on a 2-year clock with Astana next; the presidents' pitches ran from a Kyrgyz dam to a Turkmen gas plant
South Korea and the five Central Asian presidents adopted the Seoul Declaration on Wednesday: summits every 2 years, the second in Astana in 2028, a new industrial ministers' body under a supply-chain memorandum, and a Korea Desk inside each state's government structures to serve Korean companies. No sum appears in the presidential office's readout of the session. Sums came from the presidents at the business summit that followed: Tokayev's $19 billion of commercial agreements, Berdimuhamedov's 17 projects with Korean companies worth over $12 billion, Japarov's 10 business documents with the sums undisclosed.
Brussels puts €12 billion on the Middle Corridor, and Yerevan's court clears the Trump route the same day
Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday that the EU will aim to crowd in up to €12 billion of public and private investment to link the South Caucasus and Central Asia directly to the European market, with a regional connectivity summit to be organised with Bulgaria's prime minister. In Yerevan the Constitutional Court's external relations department told News.am that the framework agreement with the United States on the Trump route is constitutional, and in Seoul Kassym-Jomart Tokayev asked Korea to integrate the Middle Corridor with that route. The corridor is now priced by three parties that do not build it, and its physical bottlenecks did not move.
Zijin, building a $600 million gold plant at Raygorodok, tells Kazakhstan's first deputy prime minister it wants the Shalkiya zinc deposit
Nurlybek Nalibayev met representatives of Zijin Mining Group on Tuesday, the government's site reported at 20:35 Astana time. The Chinese company, which produced more than 1 million tonnes of copper and 90 tonnes of gold in 2025, is putting more than $600 million into a new gold-extraction plant at Raygorodok in Akmola oblast and 'expressed interest' in the Shalkiya lead-zinc deposit in Kyzylorda oblast, a state asset whose own project page still shows a schedule that ended in 2022.
Azeri Light clears $127 after Houthi strikes shut Saudi Arabia's Hormuz bypass; Baku's budget is written at $65
Trend's Tuesday print put Azeri Light at $127.29 a barrel CIF Augusta, up $7.27 on Friday's print, with Dated Brent at $129.28 after a rise of $10.72. The trigger is outside the region: Saudi Arabia suspended its East-West pipeline after drone attacks, and Monday's talks between Gulf states and Iran on passage through the Strait of Hormuz were cancelled. Baku's 2026 budget assumes $65 a barrel; Astana's, $60.
Kyrgyzstan's boom has a creditor: Russian suppliers are owed 52.3 billion roubles by Kyrgyz firms, and the CIS bill runs to 967 billion
Rosstat's count of what companies in CIS countries owe Russian organisations under direct contracts reached a record 967 billion roubles in June, up more than 40% in a year, Izvestia reported on Monday. Kazakhstan's firms account for 401.3 billion, Belarus's for 327.3 billion, Uzbekistan's for 81.7 billion, Armenia's for 65 billion and Kyrgyzstan's for 52.3 billion. The overdue share is 4.5%. Russian firms' own debts to CIS business run to about 506 billion. What remains is the trade credit on which the region's import boom from Russia runs.
Seoul's summit week reaches its declaration with five different baskets on the table
The first Korea-Central Asia summit sits in Seoul on Wednesday with a Seoul Declaration on supply chains and future industries to adopt. The week of bilateral talks that led to it shows what each capital came for: Kazakhstan a status upgrade and $19 billion of commercial agreements, Uzbekistan a $12 billion portfolio, Turkmenistan a named contractor for its canal, Tajikistan 17 documents with one railway agreement among them, Kyrgyzstan 18 documents and a trade office. Korea's instruments are loans and guarantees for Korean equipment. The declaration adds a calendar.
Tokayev tells Korean business he will turn Kazakhstan into one big construction site; Ashgabat's state site has yet to post its own president's 13 documents
At a Kazakh-Korean roundtable in Seoul on Tuesday Tokayev put the joint project portfolio at 51 projects worth over $4 billion and invited Korean companies into hospitals, schools, sports facilities and transport. His talks with President Lee were still ahead at this edition; hours after 13 documents were signed at Serdar Berdimuhamedov's summit with Lee, Turkmenistan's state site had posted at least 10 items for the day and none on the summit.
Kazakhstan gets the maximum 8% weight in JPMorgan's new frontier bond index, due by the end of September
A JPMorgan note to investors seen by Reuters puts Kazakhstan among 4 countries at the 8% cap in GBI-EM Edge, a local-currency index of 26 frontier markets and about $330 billion of debt that launches by the end of the month. No comment from Astana has surfaced; the tenge closed Monday at 447.8 to the dollar.
Kazakhstan's oil output fell 8.4% in 8 months, and the economy grew 4.1% anyway
The government's growth headquarters put January to August production at 61.7 million tonnes on Monday, against a 96 million plan for the year. Manufacturing, building sites and freight carried a growth figure that has held for 3 months.
Ashgabat signs 13 documents at the Blue House, from investment protection to the Karakum Canal; Rahmon is the last of 5 presidents to leave for Seoul
Serdar Berdimuhamedov's Tuesday meeting with Lee Jae-myung produced 13 agreements and memorandums, Seoul Economic Daily reported at 12:20 Seoul time, plus a thank-you from Lee for Turkmenistan's help in evacuating Koreans from Iran. Tokayev's turn is the afternoon. Tashkent's 13 from Monday now have contents.
A drone hits a Turkish-flagged Ro-Ro on the Novorossiysk run; Ankara’s press index is still on Syria
The Lionfish, a 139-metre container and Ro-Ro ship built in 1997, under the Turkish flag and operated by Istanbul’s Feeder Link Denizcilik, was hit by a drone in the Black Sea, the Chamber of Shipping’s records showed early on Sunday, Haber Denizde reported; a container caught fire and was put out, no one was hurt, and the ship carried on to Trabzon. The chamber’s record had her sailing from Ambarli to Novorossiysk, the port that ships most of Kazakhstan’s oil; DenizHaber’s account on Sunday afternoon had the voyage as Ambarli to Trabzon, one Turkish port to another, and left the question of who fired open.
Seoul’s summit week opens on minerals, with a new ministers’ channel and $1 billion of Korean cofinancing pledged in May
South Korea held the first meeting of industry ministers with the five Central Asian states in Seoul on Monday, with critical minerals, lithium and rare earths among them, as one of its main lines, 2 days before the first Korea-Central Asia summit. The same day Lee Jae-myung exchanged 13 documents with Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev landed on a state visit, and the Asian Development Bank’s president Masato Kanda met finance minister Koo Yun-cheol about the minerals facility to which Korea Eximbank and K-SURE each pledged $500 million in May.
Uzbekistan’s biggest bank joins China’s payment rail as Astana and Tashkent link their QR codes
The National Bank of Uzbekistan became the country’s first direct participant in CIPS, China’s yuan clearing system, on 9 September and, during a Hong Kong visit on 9 and 10 September, agreed a $250 million bond in yuan and som for the Hong Kong exchange with CICC; on Friday Kazakhstan’s National Payment Corporation and Uzbekistan’s HUMO signed up to accept each other’s QR codes. Two new pipes are going into the region’s payment plumbing.
Who sets the price of petrol: six machines between one Russian exchange and the pump
Central Asia and Mongolia buy most of their fuel from Russia and price it six different ways. A tour of the machinery, from Bishkek's dollar wall to Ashgabat's two price tags, and what each one does when the exchange in St Petersburg moves.