Economy
Business and investment
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.
Uzbekistan's central bank holds 90% of its reserves in gold and now plans to take its bond book beyond US Treasury bills
Abror Mirzo Olimov, deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Uzbekistan, told the first International Forum on Public Asset Management in Tashkent on Friday that the bank held about 439 tonnes of gold worth about $65 billion at the start of September, about 90% of international reserves of more than $72 billion, and that the bank plans to take its fixed-income portfolio of $1.766 billion, about 2.4% of reserves, beyond US Treasury bills into sovereign, subnational and other fixed-income instruments, Gazeta.uz and Spot reported.
Oyu Tolgoi's revenue runs $1.9 billion ahead of plan in 8 months; the copper dividend is still dated 2027
Oyu Tolgoi LLC earned $5.5 billion in January to August against a plan of $3.6 billion, ikon.mn reported on Thursday from the company's quarterly report, with copper output at 276,000 tonnes against 251,700 planned and gold at 339,000 ounces against 286,000. Taxes, fees and other payments to the state stood at ₮834 billion as of the second quarter, about $232 million at the central bank's rate posted for Thursday.
Uzbekistan's asset agency puts $145 million of privatisation money in the budget and an $851 million Mobiuz deal on a year-end clock
The deputy director of the State Assets Management Agency, Alisher Miraliev, told Spot at the Cbonds capital-market conference on Thursday that the $65 million paid for Humo and the $80 million paid for SamAuto have reached the budget in full, that the consortium which won Mobiuz is negotiating a contract to close by the end of 2026, and that Asakabank may be the first state bank sold, though not this year.
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.
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.
Kyrgyzstan raises its 2027 quota for foreign workers to 120,000, up from 100,000 this year and 42,000 in 2025
The cabinet's new order does not say which countries or sectors get the places. China, India, Turkey and Pakistan lead the requests, 24.kg reported; Kaktus.media says the workers go mainly to construction and sewing. The foreign ministry has distributed the quota since 2025.
Ashgabat lists 16 more Korean documents, from the Turkmenbashi refinery to the Balkan shipyard; its own summit readout is stamped 23:55
The government press service's list pairs the refinery complex with YUHANTECH, the auto-transport ministry with Hyundai Corporation, the communications ministry with LS Cable & System and the water committee with Daewoo E&C. None carries a sum. The state site's post on the Seoul summit names six documents and the four other presidents.
Uzbekistan's central bank holds at 14% against 6.2% inflation, a real rate wider than Astana's or Yerevan's
The board kept the main rate on Wednesday and named the risks it does not control: world prices, the liberalisation of regulated prices and expectations that fall more slowly than inflation. Its target is 5% by the end of 2027, the year the pension draft's changes begin.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.