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Mongolia’s fuel headquarters counts 79 tank wagons of petrol, about 2 days of sales, as Russia’s Moscow refinery stops processing and Novak orders risk scenarios
At 08:00 on Monday the Ulaanbaatar railway held 900 tank wagons of oil products, 79 of them petrol, 730 diesel and 91 jet fuel, the industry ministry’s fuel headquarters said after its meeting. On the 60 tonnes a wagon a Mongolian outlet used for the same count last October, the petrol comes to about 4,700 tonnes, 2 days of the 74,780 tonnes the headquarters’ own book recorded for August, on CAW’s arithmetic. That evening Reuters reported from 3 industry sources that Gazprom Neft’s Moscow refinery had stopped processing crude altogether on 20 September after drones set fire to both of its primary units.
Dushanbe’s tax bill triples the VAT threshold and taxes online shops at 3%, and 12 trades lose the simplified regime
Tajikistan’s government has sent parliament a package of Tax Code amendments that raises the turnover at which a business must register for VAT from 1 million to 3 million somoni, sets 3% as the simplified rate for firms between 2 and 3 million, puts a 3% turnover tax on online retail and removes construction, consulting, audit, medicines, markets and 7 other lines of business from the simplified regime altogether, Asia-Plus reported on Monday. The package arrives 10 days after the World Bank published a framework under which its grants to Dushanbe are expected to become credits from the fiscal year that began in July.
Mongolia’s parliament opens on its third attempt after 2 quorum failures as the prime minister presents G. Temuulen for justice minister
The plenary called for 14:00 on Tuesday in Ulaanbaatar opened in the State Palace, ikon.mn reported at 14:11, after failing for want of a quorum on Thursday and on Monday; Prime Minister N. Uchral was presenting the appointment of G. Temuulen as justice and home affairs minister as its first item. The house needs 64 of its 126 members to register; it reached 52 on Thursday and 58 on Monday, when 16 members of the governing Mongolian People’s Party, a former prime minister and a former Speaker among them, were on ikon.mn’s list of those who had not registered. In March the same absences idled the chamber for 2 weeks, and the prime minister resigned before it sat again.
Kyrgyz banks lost 24.5 billion som of deposits in a month; the central bank calls it company payments as lending runs 22% above December
Deposits in Kyrgyzstan’s banks stood at 900.2 billion som on 31 July, 24.5 billion or 2.7% below June, and the sector’s assets fell 6.4% in the month. The National Bank told 24.kg on Monday that scheduled payments by companies and the state explain the moves and that the banks hold “a substantial margin of safety”.
Tajikistan switches on a 250 MW solar plant in Sughd and orders 700 MW more for 2027
President Emomali Rahmon opened the Asht photovoltaic plant on Monday, 10 months after construction began, and told officials to build another 700 MW of solar capacity in the region next year, his press service said. Its account names the developer, Ayon Energy, and gives no cost, lender or tariff.
Bishkek tells parliament it cannot hold pump prices next year, with 39 billion som pledged against inflation and an election on 27 January
Kyrgyzstan’s first deputy cabinet chairman, Daniyar Amangeldiev, told a parliamentary committee on Monday that the state pays “practically 40%” of the fuel price and that “next year we will not be able to hold it and will reduce it”. At the same sitting he put 39 billion som, about $446 million at Monday’s official rate, against inflation in 2027, naming fuel first. The compensation scheme that keeps AI-92 petrol at 87.90 som a litre runs to 31 December, 27 days before the presidential election.
Mongolia’s parliament fails to open again as 16 ruling-party members, a former prime minister and a former Speaker among them, stay away
Fifty-eight of 126 members had registered by 16:42 on Monday in Ulaanbaatar, 6 short of the 64 a sitting needs, and the plenary called for 14:00 had not begun, ikon.mn reported. Sixteen of the missing belong to the governing Mongolian People’s Party: the former prime minister L. Oyun-Erdene, the former Speaker D. Amarbayasgalan and S. Amarsaikhan, the dismissed justice minister whose removal the sitting was called to hear, are on the outlet’s list. In March, with the same 3 absent, the plenary stood idle for 2 weeks until the prime minister resigned.
London’s war-risk list now covers the whole Black Sea, and the open water off Georgia’s ports is inside it
The Joint War Committee’s circular of 16 September lists the Black Sea “excluding territorial waters of adjoining countries other than Russia and Ukraine”; until then, in the Black Sea, the London market listed the coastal waters of Russia and Ukraine. Dunya, the Turkish business daily, puts war-risk premiums at 1% to 1.5% of a ship’s insured value, against 0.1% to 0.2% in normal conditions, which can add $150,000 to $300,000 to a 7-day voyage. The new line crosses routes that call at neither belligerent’s ports: KazTransOil, which owns the Batumi oil terminal, sent 293,000 tonnes of cargo toward that port in August.
A Rio Tinto mine outlives a government: Mongolia and the second deal
Mongolia’s parliament formally instructed the government to secure at least 53% of the economic benefit from the Rio Tinto-operated Oyu Tolgoi mine. Months later Rio Tinto and Ulaanbaatar agreed to cut financing and management costs and set 2027 as the target for the first dividends, and the public documents do not yet show the parliamentary requirement met in full. Madagascar, Bougainville and Juukan Gorge place the Mongolian case inside a wider pattern: Rio Tinto’s mines run for decades while the governments, contracts and communities around them change.
10 billion cubic metres, 4 years early
Tashkent said its gas would stay home. Astana promised 15 billion cubic metres more of it. Tashkent now imports what its minister had dated to 2030, Astana has nearly tripled its purchases from Gazprom in a year, and since Friday Washington is counting.
A night of 1,110 drones damages the Moscow refinery while Russia's diesel ban extension stays unpublished
Russia's defence ministry counted 1,110 drones shot down on the night of 19 to 20 September, and Moscow's mayor confirmed damage at the capital's refinery. For the Central Asian importers that buy on the same Russian market, the open item is a government resolution: the extension of the producers' diesel export ban has been reported since 16 September and published nowhere.
Ashgabat now counts 44 documents from its Seoul visit and turns to a Moscow commission
Turkmenistan's Cabinet met by video link on Friday 18 September. The state site's readout raises the Korean visit's tally to 44 signed documents, from the 29 listed by name last week, and turns to preparations for the 14th session of the Turkmen-Russian intergovernmental commission.
Mirziyoyev starts a 1.5 GW wind farm with ACWA in Karakalpakstan and prices 6 AI projects at $8 billion with no investor named
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev's 2-day trip to Karakalpakstan, which took in a meeting in Nukus on Saturday 19 September, produced 58 projects that his press service values at $7.6 billion. The largest named project is Saudi-built wind power. Its largest unnamed ones are data centres.
China's trade with Tajikistan reaches $1.78 billion in 6 months, a third more than Russia's
The two governments' commission met in Dushanbe on Friday and signed a protocol that lists sectors and no projects. Trade figures published with it put China's $1.78 billion for the first half of 2026 ahead of Russia's $1.32 billion.
Kazakhstan's utilities overhaul has finished 14 of 347 projects as contractors win 112 complaints against its tenders
A deputy prime minister's review on Friday put the government's own numbers on the national project meant to renew Kazakhstan's utility and power networks by 2029. They show a programme budgeted at 13 trillion tenge and held up at the tender stage.
Trump signs the Graham act without a word, and the gas list's clock now runs to 18 October
The White House recorded the signature of H.R. 5334 on Friday 18 September in a single sentence. Under the law the president has 30 days to raise duties to as much as 100% on the 5 largest buyers of Russian oil or gas, and on CAW's count Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan sit at the edge of that 5.
A Tbilisi appeal court swaps a 5-year sentence in the '4 October' case for 1 year and a plea; Kobakhidze says repentance is the price of release
The Tbilisi Court of Appeal on Friday approved a procedural agreement between prosecutors and Nikoloz Gventsadze, a marketing specialist and former lecturer at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs who was convicted in May of attempting to seize a strategic facility and of group violence during the 4 October 2025 attempt to storm the presidential palace: his 5-year sentence becomes 1 year in prison and 3 suspended, and he leaves prison in early October, NewsGeorgia reported. The same afternoon Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told journalists in Batumi that Georgia has no prisoners of conscience and that the state is ready to forgive "each of them, if there is repentance and admission on their part".
The World Bank offers Mongolia a non-binding 'Country Compact' for its mines as the stock exchange signs up London for dual listings
The World Bank has proposed drawing up a 'Country Compact' for Mongolia's mining and minerals sector, a document the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources describes as a declaration of goals, priorities, timelines and results, carrying no legally binding obligations, and neither a contract nor a memorandum, Montsame reported on Friday. A day earlier the Mongolian Stock Exchange and the Central Securities Depository announced a 'Mongolia Capital Market 2.0' roadmap with the London Stock Exchange Group covering trading, settlement and custody systems and dual listings for Mongolian companies, ikon.mn reported.
Kazakhstan's army will clear mines from a Caspian seabed block for the pipelines of a Lukoil project that KazMunayGas paused in March
A draft law amending Kazakhstan's Tax Code, on public discussion until 25 September, states that the Ministry of Defence will demine area No. 200 of the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea, through which the planned subsea oil pipelines of the Kalamkas-More and Khazar project are to run, Prime and Lada.kz reported on Thursday. The operator, Kalamkas-Khazar Operating LLP, a 50-50 venture of Lukoil and KazMunayGas, is to buy the equipment and transfer it to the ministry's ownership; KazMunayGas said in March that the project was suspended because of the sanctions imposed on Lukoil.
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".