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The price of shipping Kazakh oil eases off its record
The Baltic Exchange's weekly report has the Novorossiysk-to-Augusta Suezmax run settling Thursday at WS532, a round trip earning "just under $400,000" a day, almost 40 Worldscale points off in a week.
Mongolia's mid-year budget spends the money its provinces never did
The government has asked parliament to raise this year's spending ceiling by ₮998 billion ($277 million), all of it unspent balances sitting in provincial accounts, and says it has saved ₮1.4 trillion elsewhere to pay wages, pensions and energy relief. The deficit it amends had already doubled by July.
S&P returns Kazakhstan to BBB for the first time since 2016
S&P Global Ratings raised Kazakhstan's sovereign rating one notch to BBB with a stable outlook, in a decision reported on Saturday. The upgrade lands in a summer when the route that carries most of the country's export crude loads under drone attack.
Tashkent and Tbilisi retire the paper permit
Uzbekistan and Georgia have switched international road haulage to electronic permits, covering bilateral runs, transit and third-country shipments alike, under a memorandum signed during Mirziyoyev's visit to Georgia in July. Tashkent's transport ministry announced the launch this week.
Uzbekistan charters an English-law enclave to the year 2100
Mirziyoyev has signed the law creating Enterprise Uzbekistan, a digital-technology jurisdiction with zero taxes on export activity, English common law and its own commercial court, guaranteed for 74 years. Central Asia's governments are building a family of imported-law enclaves, and Tashkent's is chartered the longest.
Tajikistan's new B+ is priced against a $5.8 billion dam
S&P raised Tajikistan to B+ on 14 August, its verdict on five years in which the economy grew about 8.5% a year and reserves rose to $6.4 billion. In the same package its analysts put the remaining cost of Rogun at $5.8 billion. The upgrade and the bill belong in one sentence.
Mirziyoyev offers business a 3-year truce
Uzbekistan signed a law of guarantees for business on Monday and spent Tuesday announcing the specifics: fines cut by half, a 3-year moratorium on most small-business inspections, energy prepayments down to 15%, and 10 days to fix a first offence. The guarantees are signed. The specifics, so far, are a speech.
Turkmenistan's China trade runs $5 out for every $1 back
Trade between Turkmenistan and China came to $4.82 billion in the first half of 2026, and its structure is the story: $4.04 billion of Turkmen exports against $778 million of imports.
Urgench brings in Incheon to more than quadruple its airport
Shavkat Mirziyoyev used a Monday stop in Khorezm to unveil a $264 million public-private partnership with Incheon International Airport Corporation that is set to lift Urgench airport's capacity from 300 to 1,300 passengers an hour.
Mongolia's fuel price outran the council that sets it
AI-92 petrol rose 200 tugriks a litre on Saturday, the weekend Ulaanbaatar’s rationing lapsed, while the Price Council that approves regulated prices has still not met. The crisis is changing shape: supply is recovering, and the cost is settling where it always ends, at the pump.
The queue ended, and the money ran out
Mongolia’s fuel rationing lapsed on schedule, and on the first working day without it the industry ministry’s briefing produced a different shortage: importers lack the cash to order the next consignments, and a price rise of about 200 togrog is, in the ministry’s words, unavoidable. The AI-92 cap stays.
The summit Mongolia paid to host opens at prime minister level
UNCCD COP17 opened in Ulaanbaatar on Monday morning with the prime minister under the flag and the foreign minister as president designate, and with the gap this desk flagged last week intact: no visiting head of state had been reported at the venue by midday.
Dushanbe borrows 200 million dollars to keep paying salaries
The Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development signed a budget support loan with Tajikistan on Thursday at one per cent over twenty years. The state news agency says the money matters because a eurobond has to be repaid.
Half of Ulaanbaatar’s cars come off the road the day the fuel cap lapses
From 15 August to 12 September, city wide and with no zoning, cars may enter Ulaanbaatar traffic only on alternating days by plate parity, between 07:00 and 21:00. The window covers the desertification conference, the start of the school year, and the morning the petrol rationing expires. Nobody has published how many days of fuel the country holds.
EcoIslamicBank's EU ban takes effect today, unmentioned in Bishkek
The European Union's transaction ban on EcoIslamicBank enters force today. It was listed on 23 July in the twenty-first sanctions package, for using Russia's financial messaging system to help Moscow work around sanctions, with a wind-down of roughly three weeks.
Mongolia's ask at the summit it is paying to host is Gobi water
The national committee for COP17 met for the nineteenth time in Ulaanbaatar on Thursday morning, four days before the desertification conference opens. Mongolia has put 250 billion tugrik of state money into hosting it, about $70 million at the rate the desk logged on 5 August. What it wants out of the fortnight is financing to extend water supply in the Gobi.
Mongolia raises rates half a point, and the pumps come off rations on Saturday
The Bank of Mongolia’s monetary policy committee met out of turn on Wednesday and lifted the policy rate to 12.5%, with the reserve requirement for banks going up by the same half point. Hours later the fuel emergency headquarters said the purchase cap and the odd-even plate rule at the pumps end on 15 August. By the end of the working day the bank’s own site still showed the old rate.
Inflation reaches 13% in the country that counts petrol by the litre
Mongolia's July consumer prices rose 13.0% year on year, and the central bank called its monetary policy committee into an extraordinary session for Wednesday afternoon. The fuel ledger, meanwhile, is declared full for August, on Ulaanbaatar's arithmetic alone.
Kazakhstan sets its state chatbot a target of 150 services
The Tuesday cabinet in Astana spent its session on digital government and came out with dates. eGov GPT goes from 50 services to 150 by the end of the year, every public service centre becomes an artificial intelligence office by December, and the action plan for the whole programme is due within a week.
Kazakhstan’s economy grows around its shrinking oil
Seven-month GDP growth of 4.1% arrived on Tuesday morning with a second number attached: oil output down 8.9% year on year, at 53.2 million tonnes. It is an official, national-perimeter production number that takes in the crisis weeks, and it lands while the July numbers that would price them stay unpublished.