All News
Every published article, newest first.
Georgia's parliament confirms Tamaz Borashvili as its fourth security chief in 18 months, 83 votes to none
Parliament approved Tamaz Borashvili as head of the State Security Service on Wednesday, Interpressnews reported at 12:36: 83 deputies voted for, none against, for a term the law sets at six years. He is the fourth holder of the post since April 2025. Anri Okhanashvili took it on 4 April 2025 and left on 23 August; Mamuka Mdinaradze was confirmed on 3 September 2025 and resigned on 21 April 2026; Gela Geladze followed and announced his resignation on Monday.
Mongolia's budget committees vote to strike the spending ceiling and the base balance from the fiscal rule's 9 indicators
A joint sitting of the State Great Khural's budget and economic standing committees on Wednesday backed, with 56.7% of members present, a bill that removes two of the nine indicators from the Budget Stability Law's framework statement, the consolidated budget's base expenditure ceiling and its base balance, and replaces them with a total expenditure growth rate and a capital expenditure amount, Montsame reported at 15:25. First deputy prime minister Zh. Enkhbayar presented it. The committees' conclusion goes to the plenary.
Russia's refiners keep their diesel at home to the end of October, Vedomosti and RBC report; the intergovernmental exemption that feeds Dushanbe stands
The Russian government has decided to extend the export ban on diesel for producers to the end of October 2026, Interfax reported at 08:10 on Wednesday, citing Vedomosti and RBC on the outcome of Alexander Novak's meeting of 14 September. The ban was due to lapse on 30 September. No resolution has been published; Interfax carried the decision as media reports of the government's plans.
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.
Mongolia's prime minister removes his justice minister 2 days after the prisons chief accused him in public over his driver's relatives
Prime Minister Uchral relieved Justice and Interior Minister S. Amarsaikhan of his post on Wednesday, the government's press office said, because the branch responsible for the country's internal security 'has become unable to operate normally'. On Monday the head of the Court Decision Enforcement General Office, A. Namsamand, had told the media that the minister had his driver's wife and a younger sibling appointed as heads and threatened over other appointments.
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.
A $1 billion contract for Rogun's right bank appears in the World Bank's procurement plan, with 13 August in the signing column and no contractor named
The Bank's updated procurement plan for the Sustainable Financing for Rogun project, published on 6 September, lists Lot 3A, the remaining right-bank structures, at an estimated $1 billion, Asia-Plus reported on Tuesday. The package it replaces was priced at $1.385 billion and cancelled. A day earlier, in London, the finance minister signed an EBRD investment roadmap to 2030.
Armenia's central bank prices Russia's bans as a glut at home, and Strasbourg votes the alternative market the same afternoon
The Central Bank of Armenia raised its refinancing rate by 0.25 points to 6.75% on Tuesday and listed the restrictions on exports to Russia among the risks, as excess supply on the domestic market. The same afternoon the European Parliament approved, 583 votes to 49, a 2-year suspension of duties on about 80% of Armenia's exports to the EU.
Uzbekistan's finance ministry drafts a 12-year climb in the pension age for a fund the budget is set to top up with 23 trillion soums this year
The Ministry of Economy and Finance has posted a draft presidential decree, UzDaily reported on Tuesday, that would raise the retirement age by 3 months a year from 2028, to 63 for men and 58 for women in 2039. The same ministry's fiscal strategy books a 23 trillion soum budget transfer to the Pension Fund for 2026, up from 16.3 trillion 2 years earlier.
Fidan arrives in Baku with a $15 billion trade target and a summit to prepare; Ankara's index reached No: 180 without a word on the tug strike that killed 2 Azerbaijanis
Turkey's foreign ministry announced the visit of 15 and 16 September in one sentence on Monday. Hürriyet Daily News listed the meetings, with Jeyhun Bayramov, defence minister Zakir Hasanov and Ilham Aliyev, and the agenda: the trade target both presidents set, energy and transport projects, the defence industry, and the Organization of Turkic States summit Ankara hosts on 29 and 30 October.
Beijing's Silk Road Fund signs a financing agreement of up to $395 million with Uzbekistan's state bank for toll expressways, in the week the bank joined China's payment rail
The National Bank for Foreign Economic Activity signed the agreement in Hong Kong during prime minister Abdulla Aripov's visit to the Belt and Road summit on 9 and 10 September and disclosed it on Sunday. The priority named is modern toll expressways; the one Hong Kong's Belt and Road office calls its priority, Tashkent-Samarkand, broke ground on 22 August at a cost of $2.2 billion.
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.
Mongolia signs the Oyu Tolgoi amendments 17 years on: a first dividend dated 2027, as the parliament that spent the coal dividend reopens
Prime minister Uchral announced, with Rio Tinto's Simon Trott beside him, that changes to the 2009 shareholders' agreement had been signed and confirmed, ikon.mn reported on Saturday; the government counts $8.4 billion off the mine's costs and about $4 billion more for Mongolia over its life. The Speaker opened the autumn session on Tuesday by calling it the first dividend in 17 years. The pension rise in this year's budget was paid from coal.