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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.
Seoul’s summit week opens on minerals, with a new ministers’ channel and $1 billion of Korean cofinancing pledged in May
South Korea held the first meeting of industry ministers with the five Central Asian states in Seoul on Monday, with critical minerals, lithium and rare earths among them, as one of its main lines, 2 days before the first Korea-Central Asia summit. The same day Lee Jae-myung exchanged 13 documents with Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev landed on a state visit, and the Asian Development Bank’s president Masato Kanda met finance minister Koo Yun-cheol about the minerals facility to which Korea Eximbank and K-SURE each pledged $500 million in May.
Overchuk holds out a full free-trade zone for Mongolia after 3 years, on a schedule of dairy, chocolate, cars and metals
Russia’s deputy prime minister Alexei Overchuk told reporters in Ulaanbaatar on Monday that the EAEU’s temporary trade agreement with Mongolia, in force since 22 July, should become a permanent, full-format free-trade agreement once its 3-year term has run. The schedule that agreement carries zeroes or cuts duties on 367 tariff lines each way; the goods listed on Russia’s side at entry into force, in Interfax’s report from the Eurasian Economic Commission, were dairy, confectionery, tinned food, chocolate, drinks, cars, special machinery and metals.
Kyrgyzstan’s central bank made 45.7 billion som last year, and the finance ministry credits Kumtor’s gold
The National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic earned 45.7 billion som in 2025, three times the year before, and the reason is its right to buy gold from the state-run Kumtor mine, the deputy finance minister told a parliamentary committee on Monday. The same hearing put the debt to China at $1.4 billion and 16% of budget revenue.
The World Bank's new Tajikistan programme replaces grants with credits from July and rates its own risk as high
The Bank's Country Partnership Framework for fiscal years 2026 to 2032, which its board discussed on 3 June and Asia-Plus read in full on Friday, sets an indicative $1 billion to $1.2 billion of IDA money over 7 years, moves the country from IDA grants to IDA credits from fiscal year 2027, and assesses the overall risk of the programme as high. On the Bank's calendar fiscal year 2027 began on 1 July 2026. The document is 3 months old; the terms in it are already running.
Barki Tojik books a 2.45 billion somoni profit made of currency gains while owing 8.36 billion to the plants that power it
The 2025 accounts of Tajikistan's power utility, published by the energy ministry and read by Asia-Plus on Thursday, show a net operating profit of 2.45 billion somoni, $265 million, after a loss of 1.6 billion in 2024, and the line that made the difference is 2.93 billion somoni of net income from foreign-currency operations. Beneath it sit 29.3 billion somoni of accumulated losses, 23.26 billion of financial obligations and 8.36 billion owed to the generators, Rogun among them. The auditor kept its warning.
Azerbaijan's state bank pays $140 million for 51% of Davr Bank, 40% above the price it announced in May
The International Bank of Azerbaijan bought 51% of Tashkent's Davr Bank on Thursday in 6 trades on the Tashkent stock exchange for 1.646 trillion soums, $139.5 million at Gazeta.uz's conversion. In May the price was given as more than $100 million. Neither report explains the difference.