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The corridor and the war now share one sea
Peskov called the strikes in the Caspian extremely dangerous on Monday. In the same days, the first cargo to move under electronic TIR across three countries crossed that water from Baku to Turkmenbashi.
Russia puts a price on the migrant family
The law Putin signed on 26 July ties the right to work to an income test measured per dependant, and charges a fixed monthly tax for each of them. Most of it starts on 1 January 2027.
Astana starts collecting $4.9 billion against an arbitral order
The voluntary deadline passed on 20 July, and Kazakhstan opened enforcement proceedings for a 2.3 trillion tenge environmental fine against NCOC, the Kashagan operator, the justice ministry said on the 21st; the tenge figure is the legal one, and dollar renderings of it run from $4.4 to $4.9 billion. A UNCITRAL tribunal had barred exactly that, as the consortium announced on 16 July. Reuters reports the state warned the consortium’s chief executive of administrative and criminal liability.
The heat breaks, and the bill arrives in mud
Bishkek logged 43.5 degrees on Sunday, its third daily record in a row, after the hottest 17 and 18 July in observation history; Uzbekistan’s grid ran five record days. From Tuesday both hydromets forecast the break, and both have posted mudflow warnings for the mountain belts, Kyrgyzstan’s through 25 July, Uzbekistan’s through the 24th. Summer in the region now alternates between two infrastructure tests, and there is no season between them.
Kazakhstan’s fuel wall takes comments for one more day
Public comment on the energy ministry’s draft order closes on Tuesday. The draft extends the ban on gasoline and diesel exports by road and rail from 22 November 2026 to 22 May 2027, keeps EAEU members inside it, and adds a separate half-year ban from January on jet kerosene, light distillates, gasoils, toluene, xylene and bitumen leaving the union’s customs territory.
Turkmenistan negotiates its own terminal on the Black Sea
At a business forum in Georgia on 16 July, Serdar Berdimuhamedov said Ashgabat is in talks to establish a Turkmen cargo terminal on Georgia’s Black Sea coast. Add the Damen dredging talks at Turkmenbashi and the Baku transit spine, and the corridor’s quietest player is assembling positions at every gate between the Caspian and Europe.
Kazakhstan switches on money that reports itself
On 18 July the digital tenge becomes legal tender in full circulation, and its defining feature is the mark: the law lets each digital tenge be tagged with a unique identifier, and every movement runs on the National Bank’s platform, so the state can trace the money it issues. Uzbekistan is fighting over whether banks must report large transfers. Kazakhstan has built a currency that makes the question obsolete.
Uzbekistan starts rolling the sheet steel it has always imported
On Monday Mirziyoyev pushed the button on an $839 million casting-and-rolling complex at Uzmetkombinat in Bekabad, the country’s first production of hot-rolled sheet. Two days later, in the middle of a +44 to +46 heat warning, the national grid set a consumption record. The steel week tells one story from both ends: Central Asia’s industrial ambitions are arriving faster than the systems meant to feed them.
A billion dollars keeps the som exactly where it is
Kyrgyzstan’s National Bank has intervened in the currency market nine times this year, always as a seller of dollars, and the disclosed operations alone sum past $1.1 billion. The official rate has sat at 87.45 to the dollar since at least mid-June. A rate that does not move in a month of 11% inflation is a defended line, and the defense is getting more expensive.
Uzbekistan carves out a constitutional enclave for foreign capital
Mirziyoyev has signed the constitutional law on the Tashkent International Financial Center: a district of the capital where English common law applies, a court can seat foreign judges, the regulator’s acts outrank national legislation, and tax exemptions run to 2076. It is the region’s third English-law enclave, and the first anchored in a constitution’s own tier of law.
The Syr Darya treaty is now law in both capitals
Tokayev has signed the law ratifying Kazakhstan’s agreement with Uzbekistan on joint management of transboundary waters, completing a process Tashkent finished in March. The two states that share the river’s lower course now have a standing commission, and a basin that has run on annual improvisation gets its first permanent bilateral machine.
Kyrgyzstan answers 11.2% inflation with a one-year price freeze
President Japarov has signed a decree imposing a one-year moratorium on raising selected tariffs, fees and prices of state and municipal services. It is the third administrative price intervention this year, and it lands three days after the Asian Development Bank raised Kyrgyzstan’s 2026 inflation forecast to 11.2%.
A new round of US-Iran strikes hits the port Kazakhstan just bet on
Eleven days after Kazakhstan signed a 27-year deal to build a terminal at Iran’s Shahid Rajaee port, U.S. strikes hit Bandar Abbas, where the port sits. The contract commits Astana to a southern outlet it has wanted for three decades. The war has just repriced the risk on it.
Tajikistan will spend $48 million on water works this year, much of it fixing what already exists
Tajikistan’s land-reclamation agency says it will spend 497.5 million somoni, about $48 million, on irrigation and flood works in 2026. Nearly 40% of that goes to replacing and repairing pumping-station equipment, which says as much about the state of the system as about any ambition to grow it.
Kyrgyzstan keeps 8.9% growth, and the price of it climbs to 11.2%
The Asian Development Bank now expects consumer prices in Kyrgyzstan to rise 11.2% this year, up from the 10.3% it forecast in April, while it holds growth at 8.9%. The revision is small on paper. It points at the question the headline growth rate keeps dodging: what the number is built on.
Tashkent moves to flag large personal transfers, reviving a fight it lost before
A draft resolution would require banks to report individuals whose cards take in large monthly transfers from people other than close relatives. The State Tax Committee calls it a technical clean-up of rules that already exist. Its critics read it as a government decree reopening access to financial data a previous reform round had closed.
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The corridor Central Asia is betting on is running low on water
This week Turkmenistan's ambassador called on the Dutch shipbuilder Damen to talk about its Caspian port, and the headline was dredging. The detail matters more than a courtesy visit suggests. The Caspian Sea is falling, and the trade corridor Central Asia is building to bypass Russia depends on ports staying deep enough to use.
Kyrgyzstan's new Issyk-Kul zone offers English law and 49 years without tax
On 3 July President Sadyr Japarov opened the Tamchy Special Financial Investment Territory on Lake Issyk-Kul: 6,000 hectares under English common law, no tax for 49 years, full profit repatriation and its own arbitration court. He pitched it as a Dubai or Singapore for the region. The first residents came from Switzerland, Hong Kong and the Gulf.
Kazakhstan's lithium ambition runs into the gap between a lab and a plant
The industry ministry says Kazakh scientists have pulled lithium from low-grade ore at a concentration standard methods cannot reach. It is a laboratory result. The country's aim, to process critical minerals rather than ship the rock, still turns on money and scale it does not yet have.
The World Bank adds $300 million to a dam that may never pay for itself
On 30 June the World Bank approved a second $300 million grant for Tajikistan's Rogun hydropower plant, and the next day added $100 million for economic reforms. The money keeps arriving for a project that S&P has warned may never earn back its cost, and that downstream neighbours say could shrink the Amu Darya.