Turkmenistan reports 6.3% growth for 9 months and a budget collected to 100.1% of plan
The readout of the Cabinet of Ministers’ sitting of 2 October, held by video link under President Serdar Berdimuhamedov, puts GDP growth for January to September at 6.3%, budget revenue at 100.1% of plan and spending at 97.2%, and foreign trade turnover 8.3% above a year earlier. All figures are the state’s own, with no base sums printed.
Kazakhstan’s inflation slows to 9.3% in September as the tenge opens the week at 447.73
Annual inflation fell to 9.3% in September from 9.8% in August, the fourth monthly decline in a row, the Bureau of National Statistics reported on 1 October. Monthly inflation held at 0.6%. The National Bank set the official rate at 447.73 tenge to the dollar for Monday, with the base rate at 16.25% ahead of its decision of 23 October.
Uzbekistan folds two ministries into one for education and science
A decree of 3 October merges the Ministry of Preschool and School Education and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation into a Ministry of Education and Science, and gives the Cabinet a week to organise it. That evening economic adviser Obid Khakimov became deputy head of the presidential administration for education reform, and on Sunday businessman Zafar Khashimov was named to lead a working group on it.
The 84-som promise: Kyrgyzstan’s fuel cap expired, the subsidy did not
In June the state promised petrol at no more than 84.40 som a litre until 30 September. On 1 October the pump said 87.90, the subsidy behind it up to 30.88, and the bill is yours.
Uzbekistan imported $1.21 billion of gas in 8 months and sold $322 million
Uzbekistan’s gas imports were worth $1.21 billion in January to August, 15.2% more than a year earlier, while its gas exports fell 34.8% to $322.3 million, by National Statistics Committee figures published on 1 October. The bill is almost 4 times the receipts, and on Thursday the US Trade Representative faces its first deadline under the act aimed at the 5 largest importers of Russian gas.
Aliyev puts 9 billion manat on defence and tells his party Azerbaijan joins no camp
At the eighth congress of his New Azerbaijan Party on Friday, President Ilham Aliyev said the 2027 budget sets aside about 9 billion manat, $5.2 billion by Trend’s conversion, for military and security spending, that currency reserves have reached $90 billion, about 20 times the external debt, and that Azerbaijan “does not join any camp and will not”. The speech is a doctrine with a price list attached.
After 14 Caspian deaths, Tokayev picks a chief of staff from his own guard
President Tokayev on Monday made Aitkurman Omarbekov, a major general of the State Guard Service, first deputy defence minister and chief of the General Staff, two days after relieving Kanysh Abubakirov from that post, deputy minister Almaz Dzhumakeev and navy commander Kanat Niyazbekov. Fourteen servicemen died in a Caspian exercise on 24 September, and a reform plan is due from the new defence minister on Wednesday.
An Armenian court remands the Azerbaijani soldier taken at Shaki for 2 months on 5 charges
The Investigative Committee said on Friday that Nasim Musaev, the Azerbaijani conscript accused of shooting a woman in her home in the Syunik village of Shaki on Thursday, was remanded in custody for 2 months. Armenia’s Prosecutor General’s Office is prosecuting him under 5 articles: illegal border crossing, smuggling of military goods or firearms, illegal arms trafficking, unlawful entry into a dwelling and grave harm to health.
Mongolia’s Democrats demand a confidence vote on Uchral as the Khural debates the budget
The Democratic Party’s political council asked on Friday that Prime Minister Uchral put a question of confidence to the Khural, party leader Tsogtgerel said, after its first demand, the dismissal of defence minister Batlut, went unanswered. The parliament sat the same day on the 2026 budget rewrite, with votes set for 17:00, and the industry minister said 78,000 tonnes of petrol are contracted from Russia for October.
Tajikistan’s lower house ratifies a second $300 million World Bank grant for Rogun
The Assembly of Representatives ratified on Thursday the financing agreement with the International Development Association for the first phase of Rogun’s sustainable financing, a $300 million grant the World Bank’s board approved on 30 June, Asia-Plus reported on Friday. With the first grant of $350 million the IDA’s money for the plant reaches $650 million, against about $5.8 billion that S&P put on the remaining work in August.
Tbilisi says free power to Abkhazia cost Enguri 64 million lari and its 2025 profit
Georgia’s fiscal risks analysis for 2027 counts 64 million lari that Enguri lost in 2025 by supplying Abkhazia free, up from 45 million in 2024, bm.ge reported on Friday. The plant sent 1.465 billion kWh there, sold 1.606 billion at home and exported 309.2 million, and the ministry says it would have made a 61 million lari profit instead of losing 3.7 million.
Ashgabat’s forum spends day 2 on a crypto road map to 2030 and prices no document
A deputy communications minister told the forum on Friday that Turkmenistan has a law on virtual assets and a road map to 2030 for regulating them and introducing mining: the Central Bank licenses crypto exchanges, the energy ministry sets tariffs for industrial mining and the finance ministry watches the money, Turkmenportal reported. The pages that list Thursday’s 7 documents still print no sum.
Uzbekistan’s Senate lets the Central Bank write its rules without the chamber of commerce
Senators approved on Friday a law that frees the Central Bank’s regulations from consent by the chamber of commerce and the business ombudsman, registers its prudential and monetary-policy acts at the justice ministry within 10 working days and lifts the 3-month wait before they take effect, Gazeta.uz reported. Checks on the regulator will need a Senate decision, and the drafting followed the IMF and World Bank’s FSAP advice.
At the EAEU council, Lukashenko asks Armenia where its brandy will go if it chooses the EU
The Eurasian Intergovernmental Council met in Minsk on Friday under Kazakhstan’s chairmanship, with Pashinyan on a video link. Bektenov put the union’s first-half growth at 1.1% and its investment at $244.5 billion, Mishustin said mutual trade rose 10% from January to July, and Lukashenko told the heads of delegations that Armenia should work out where its brandy and fruit will go before it hurries to the EU.
Astana and Ulaanbaatar set a $500 million trade target against $133.5 million last year
The 10th session of the Kazakhstan-Mongolia intergovernmental commission met in Astana on Thursday and signed a protocol that aims the two countries’ trade at $500 million under their 2025 to 2027 roadmap, Mongolia’s foreign ministry said. Kazakhstan’s agriculture ministry put 2025 trade at $133.5 million, with $123 million of it Kazakh exports, so the target is almost 4 times last year’s turnover.
An Azerbaijani conscript who left his unit is held in Armenia, accused of shooting a woman
A serviceman who walked out of an Azerbaijani unit in the Lachin district on 26 September is accused of entering a house in the Syunik village of Shaki on Thursday and shooting the woman who found him in the leg. He was detained 90 minutes later. The prosecutors general of Armenia and Azerbaijan issued statements that match on his absence from his unit and open different cases.
Kyrgyzstan’s first satellite rides a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg and will be run from Bishkek
The president’s administration said the spacecraft went up on 1 October from Vandenberg in California on a SpaceX rideshare, the product of joint work with the United Arab Emirates. Sadyr Japarov, who watched the launch, said it is an earth-observation satellite for farmland, glaciers and disasters, built over about two and a half years, and that a communications satellite could follow in 5 to 10 years.
The UK sanctions 4 Georgians for Kremlin disinformation and names Tskhinvali’s leaders
Britain’s package of 1 October lists 23 individuals and entities and 8 ships. Among them are 7 people “involved in spreading pro-Kremlin disinformation”, 4 of them Georgian nationals, and the serving and former heads of the Russian-installed authority in South Ossetia. The same evening a few dozen people rallied in Tbilisi’s Rike Park for Mikheil Saakashvili’s release, against the interior ministry’s refusal.
Ashgabat’s forum signs 7 documents on its first day and prints no sum for any of them
The state portal’s account of the opening day lists 5 memoranda and 2 contracts, among them Damen of the Netherlands twice, for the water authority’s fleet and for the Balkan shipyard to 2036, China State Construction with the railway ministry, Tianjin Bohua with Turkmenhimiya, a Korean telecoms firm and a German contract for Turkmennebit. More than 700 participants heard the finance minister price last year’s GDP at $77.4 billion.