Search
The ADB puts $250 million into the road around Tbilisi
The Asian Development Bank approved a $250 million loan on 30 July for an 18.9-kilometre four-lane bypass of the Georgian capital, framing it as freight relief on the corridor that links Central Asia to Europe.
Ulaanbaatar counts 4,127 delegates, and rations its traffic
Registration for the UN desertification conference COP17 reached 4,127 delegates, the state agency MONTSAME reported on 29 July, against the more than 2,000 it reported days earlier. The capital will run even-odd licence-plate restrictions from 15 August to 12 September.
The region’s diplomacy moves to a Kyrgyz lakeshore
Shavkat Mirziyoyev departed for Kyrgyzstan on Thursday morning on a state visit that runs into a Central Asia–Azerbaijan summit at Cholpon-Ata from 30 July to 1 August. Ilham Aliyev arrives on a state visit of his own.
Washington picks up the phone on the CPC
Kazakhstan’s foreign minister Yermek Kosherbayev and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the crisis around the Caspian Pipeline Consortium by phone on 29 July. No earlier cabinet-level American engagement with the route’s security has surfaced in the wires since the drone attacks began on 17 July.
Kazakhstan’s oil export duty falls 23% for August
Kazakhstan will levy $76 on each tonne of exported crude and light products in August, down from $99 in July, as its price-linked duty formula tracks a weaker oil price. The cut lands on volumes already thinned by the closure of the CPC route, so the state’s oil take shrinks on rate and quantity at once.
A tungsten mine for a million tonnes of ore a year
Patokh Shodiev and Mukadaskhan Ibragimova, with a Chinese partner, will develop the Bayan tungsten deposit in North Kazakhstan region. Peak output is put at 1 million tonnes of ore a year, and the first year at 2,820 tonnes.
Kabul turns to its northern door
The Taliban economic commission approved expanding trade through Sher Khan Port with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and China, and told the public works ministry to build the Afghan section of an ECO rail corridor.
Dushanbe opens two Chinese generation tracks in one day
Tajikistan’s energy minister met China Energy about a 200 MW solar plant in the north and China Gezhouba about two hydropower plants on the Zarafshan, both on Tuesday.
Moscow answers Yerevan through its foreign intelligence service
A day after Pashinyan asked Putin to lift the export restrictions, the Kremlin briefing dealt with an EU referendum and the Foreign Intelligence Service issued four statements on what leaving the Eurasian Economic Union would cost Armenia.
Bishkek petrol runs up to 8.5 som over the state cap
The ceiling for AI-92 is 79.9 som a litre. Five Bishkek networks were selling it between 84.9 and 88.4 on Tuesday. The state’s answer that afternoon was a voluntary agreement with the traders
Atyrau loses power on the day the plan gets its deadlines
The prime minister set year-end deadlines for the repair campaign at 11:15 on Tuesday. By evening, load-shedding automatics had cut more than 6,000 homes on Atyrau’s left bank.
Bishkek finds 40 companies at sanctions risk, and closes three
About 40 companies carrying heightened sanctions risk have been identified in Kyrgyzstan since the start of July. Three have been shut and a cryptocurrency licence revoked, and the three match names on the European Union’s new list.
Pashinyan asks Putin to lift the export bans
Armenia’s prime minister raised the Russian restrictions with Putin by telephone on Monday, the day the dairy ban took effect, and told him they contradict both the bilateral treaty framework and the rules of the Eurasian Economic Union.
Tashkent puts an AI on 106,000 energy workers
A day after the energy minister was dismissed, Uzbekistan has a new centre monitoring the whole sector workforce against ten indicators. The loss figures behind the decision came out with it.
A 20% reserve margin appears in a Kazakh plan
The cabinet put its energy and utilities national project on the table on Tuesday morning. Inside it sits a target for spare capacity, with a date on it.
Armenia’s dairy ban takes effect
Russia’s restriction on Armenian dairy came into force on Monday. Yerevan’s food safety inspectorate says the joint inspection behind it found nothing of the kind.
Dushanbe says the Russian petrol ban should not reach it
Russia supplies 72.3% of the fuel Tajikistan burns. Its energy minister says the indicative balance has recently run into difficulty, and that the export ban extended last week should not in principle touch deliveries made under an intergovernmental agreement.
Kabul and Tashkent sign 22 documents worth $200 million
This morning the desk asked which goods would appear when the paperwork did. Cotton appeared first, at 10,000 tonnes on trial with an offer for 100,000 more.
Xi Jinping comes to Bishkek for the summit days
China’s president will make a state visit to Kyrgyzstan on 31 August and 1 September, the days of the SCO summit. The file named first is the railway.
Tashkent sacks its energy minister, and four utilities go on probation
Jurabek Mirzamahmudov was released on Monday. Mirziyoyev located the failure in management of the system and gave the heads of four state energy companies until the end of the year.