Economy
Business and investment
Baku's fuel for Armenia nears 20,000 tonnes, and every wagon still goes through Georgia
Another 17 tank wagons of Azerbaijani diesel leave Baku's Bilajari yard for the Georgian border today. The running total the Baku press prints, near 15,000 tonnes of diesel and 5,000 of petrol, is small against Armenia's import book and large as a fact: the peace dividend is counted in wagons, and its only track runs through a third country.
Mongolia's parliament returns on 7 September to rewrite this year's budget
The Speaker's Council called an extraordinary session of the State Great Khural for 7 to 14 September with one item on it: the amendment to the 2026 budget. The 2027 draft filed on 31 August, the one that suspends the spending rule, is not on the list.
Ulaanbaatar's 2027 budget suspends its own spending rule for a year
The government sent parliament a 2027 budget on Monday with 41.3 trillion tugriks of revenue, 43.6 trillion of spending and a 2.3 trillion deficit, and asked to switch off the spending ceiling of the Fiscal Stability Law for the year. The exemption is justified by one-off money: state-company and Oyu Tolgoi dividends, domestic securities and last year's carry-overs.
Turkmenistan's exchange bulletin returns with a $7.3 million week
The state commodity exchange published a weekly trade report for the last week of August: 8 transactions, just over $7.27 million in foreign-currency sales and 8.2 million manat in domestic deals. Buyers came from the UAE, Turkey and Afghanistan.
Ulaanbaatar closes the drought books at $1.3 billion
COP17 closed at the end of last week with a $1.3 billion restoration and drought portfolio for 23 countries, while the decision on a global drought regime travels on to Egypt.
Uzbekistan and India trade up to a comprehensive partnership
Modi's Tashkent stop closed on Sunday with the relationship raised to a comprehensive strategic partnership, 10 documents signed and a $5 billion trade target set for 2030.
Remittances into Kyrgyzstan clear $1.5 billion by midyear
Money transfers into Kyrgyzstan reached $1,539.5 million in January through June against $150.6 million sent out, by the National Bank's half-year count carried on Friday: a net inflow of $1.39 billion, and a corridor that in June ran 92.8% through the CIS.
Ulaanbaatar takes back 407 pieces of its greenbelt
The governor of Mongolia's capital revoked land rights on 407 plots in the forested belt around Ulaanbaatar, out of 11,706 granted there, after inspections of 26 summer-cottage zones, the state agency Montsame reported on Friday.
Tashkent's gas ledger runs 4 to 1 toward imports
Seven months of 2026 put Uzbekistan's gas trade in one line: $1.1 billion bought from Russia and Turkmenistan, $279.7 million sold to China, and the selling side down 36.2% on the year, by the national statistics committee's count carried on Friday.
The drought rule leaves Ulaanbaatar for Egypt
The fight that defined the desertification summit's second week ends without an instrument: negotiators reached what the talks' rapporteurs called a delicate agreement to carry the drought question to COP18, and the closing plenary was set to adopt the package on Friday afternoon in Ulaanbaatar.
Central Asia puts its law up for rent
Three states have now built four enclaves where their own law steps aside for England's, on leases running to 2066, 2074, 2076 and the year 2100. The rents are real, the tenants are arriving slowly, and the length of the leases is the most honest document the region has published about itself.
The ADB puts $400 million behind the region's border queues
The Asian Development Bank approved on Thursday a $400 million regional facility, BUILD, to modernise border crossings across the 11 CAREC countries, with up to $50 million per project over 10 years. The priority projects named so far are Tajik: Fotehobod-Oybek on the Uzbek border, Sarazm and Navbunyod.
Dushanbe rewrites its 3-year forecast: more freight, more investment, less aluminiu
Tajikistan's government has revised its macroeconomic forecast for 2027 to 2029. Industrial output is now expected to reach about 132 billion somoni ($14.3 billion) in 2028 against roughly 106 billion in the previous version, freight traffic 211 million tonnes instead of 160 million, and fixed investment 44.5 billion somoni instead of 40.5 billion. The aluminium line moved the other way: the 188,000-tonne target for 2028 has been cut, and the new figure was left out of the summary that reached print.
The EBRD's president reopens the Ashgabat ledger
Odile Renaud-Basso met Serdar Berdymukhamedov in Ashgabat, and the two sides signed a package of memoranda: a central-bank framework running 2027 to 2032 and a program on the banking system, the Ashgabat-based nCa reported Thursday.
The biggest container line stops booking Novorossiysk
MSC suspended new bookings to and from Novorossiysk with immediate effect after a strike on one of its ships bound for the port. At the grain quay in the same harbor, repairs are now priced at up to four months.
KazMunayGas starts building a yuan book on its home exchange
The national oil company opened books on Wednesday for two tranches of yuan bonds on the Astana International Exchange, with settlement set for 2 September.
The Kokzhide file opens, and the water tests positive at all five operators
A court order has pried loose the state's own hydrogeology report on Kokzhide, Kazakhstan's largest reserve of fresh groundwater. It shows oil products above permitted levels at wells of every company drilling there.
Turkmenistan reports $46.4 million of trade and 15 days of silence on Kabul
Turkmenistan's state news service reported on 24 August that the country's commodity exchange registered 19 transactions worth more than $46.412 million in a week, with buyers from the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Afghanistan. The same service has published nothing about the gas memoranda Ashgabat signed with Kabul on 10 August.
Baku and Tashkent agree to count each other's pension years
The pension agreement signed at Sunday's Tashkent summit lets citizens who worked in both countries stack their service years for eligibility, with each state paying the share earned on its territory. The terms were published on Monday; ratification is still ahead.
Kazakhstan's cabinet is ordered out, and it plans the next 3 years
The government President Tokayev has told to resign spent Tuesday morning approving Kazakhstan's economic forecast for 2027 to 2029: growth above 5%, exports rising to $88.5 billion, and 5 trillion tenge of targeted National Fund money. The numbers will outlive the cabinet that wrote them.