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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.
Saida Mirziyoyeva adds the Tashkent financial centre to the presidential administration she already runs
A presidential decree reported on Thursday appoints Saida Mirziyoyeva, head of the presidential administration and the president's daughter, managing director of the Tashkent International Financial Centre, the jurisdiction with its own regulator, court and a tax regime to 2076 that came into force in July. She keeps the administration.
Washington's Iranian-airline sweep lands in Kazakhstan as a ticket agent and in Tbilisi as 6 airlines
The US Treasury's designation of 27 Iranian airlines and their foreign enablers on Tuesday named one Central Asian company, Tour Invest of Kazakhstan, as Mahan Air's general sales agent. On Thursday Georgia's Civil Aviation Agency said 6 of the newly listed carriers fly between Georgia and Iran and that Tbilisi will act in full compliance with the sanctions regime. Astana had said nothing the desk found by evening.
The UN's debt expert asks Dushanbe for the sums behind its projects as the grant era ends in 2027
Attiya Waris, the UN independent expert on foreign debt, ended a 12-day visit to Tajikistan on 31 August with a statement that reached the English-language wires through Eurasianet on 8 September: the government's actions “are not sufficiently visible to the public”, fiscal decisions “should be a transparent and participatory process”, the state should “prepare a cost-benefit analysis of all the government projects”, and from 2027 the country “will move from grant-based financing to concessional lending”. The latest poverty rate she cites is from 2018. Eight days after her statement, the president read the nation a ledger in which GDP had grown almost 100 times.
Mongolia's environment minister counts COP17 at ₮217 billion of budget, ₮38.6 billion of it classified, against $1.4 billion of pledges
The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change had ₮217.1 billion approved for hosting the UN desertification conference in August, of which ₮38.6 billion was budgeted for procurement classified as a state secret, minister Sandag-Ochir Tsend said at a press conference on Wednesday, gogo.mn reported. Ikon.mn quoted the same minister putting the conference's investment opportunities and pledges at $1.4 billion, about ₮5 trillion.
Yerevan lodges a complaint against Russia's produce bans through the EAEU as Pashinyan leaves for Paris
Armenia has filed a complaint against the restrictions Russia has kept on Armenian goods since May, deputy economy minister Tigran Gasparyan told a briefing on Tuesday, and expects them lifted “with the help of the mechanisms that operate within the EAEU”. On Wednesday morning Armenpress reported the prime minister leaving for a working visit to Paris. The Moscow visit the Kremlin announced on Monday has drawn no word from Yerevan's channels that the desk could find.
Georgia promises to double its ports by 2032 for a corridor whose shallowest link is on the other sea
Georgia's sea ports and terminals handled 13.7 million tonnes in the first 8 months of 2026, 24% more than a year earlier and the best figure in ten years, the economy minister told the Georgia International Maritime Forum in Batumi. The prime minister, at the same opening, set a ten-year target: railway capacity doubled, port capacity doubled, airport capacity tripled, about $7 billion by 2032. The desk's own reading of the route puts its narrowest section across Azerbaijan and the Caspian, at a Kazakh quay whose fenders are broken and whose water is falling, and there the only dated commitment is a dredging contract.
Tashkent and Belgrade adopt a labour-migration agreement and a 2026 to 2028 industrial plan, with a free-trade deal proposed
Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Aleksandar Vucic closed their Belgrade talks on Tuesday by welcoming the adoption of an agreement on mobility and labour migration and adopting a joint action plan on industrial partnership for 2026 to 2028, the presidential press service said in UzDaily's account; a free-trade agreement is proposed for drafting, and the opening of diplomatic missions is named as an important step. Trade between the two countries was $41.9 million in 2025.
Rahmon's 35-year ledger runs in somoni: GDP up 100 times, budget revenue up 250 times, energy independence in 2027
In his address for Tajikistan's 35th independence day, published by Khovar at noon on Tuesday, Emomali Rahmon put GDP at 177 billion somoni in 2025 against 1.8 billion in 2000, state budget revenue at 65 billion somoni this year against 252 million, and the arrival of "energy independence" at the third Rogun unit in 2027. The multipliers are nominal sums in somoni; the dollar ledger the World Bank keeps reads $17.6 billion of GDP, and remittances at 47.9% of it.
Ashgabat sets 9 September for the cotton harvest and hears five governors give the same report
President Serdar Berdimuhamedov held a working meeting on Monday with vice-premier T. Atahallyev and the five provincial governors on the harvest and the wheat sowing, the state site reported; the vice-premier said the cotton picking is scheduled to begin on 9 September, and the president ordered the wheat sown to agrotechnical deadlines and the construction timed to the independence anniversary later this month finished on time. No readout of a Cabinet sitting has appeared on the state sites for Friday 4 September, the second Friday running.
Kyrgyzstan puts a 74.5 billion som price on its melting glaciers
A decree signed by President Sadyr Japarov creates a fund for the protection of Kyrgyzstan's glaciers and Lake Issyk-Kul, 24.kg reported on Tuesday morning, five days after the environment ministry published a draft National Adaptation Plan to 2035 costed at 74.5 billion som ($852 million), 54% of it expected from foreign grants and climate funds. The decree gives the cabinet until 1 October to say what the fund is and where its money comes from.
Mongolia's premier reaches into the coal company's profit for the pension rise, and the auditor puts the deficit at 2% of GDP
Nyam-Osoryn Uchral said on Monday, as the State Great Khural's extraordinary session opened on the budget amendment, that this year's pension and wage increases will be paid with ₮1.5 trillion ($417 million) taken from Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi as a dividend, through an amendment to the law that keeps state companies' dividends out of the budget. On Tuesday the general auditor told the same chamber that the package adds ₮998 billion of spending with no new revenue and fails the fiscal rule's primary-balance test.
Mongolia's parliament opens a budget rewrite that turns a 57% export jump into pensions and pay rises
The State Great Khural opened its extraordinary session at 10:02 on Monday with 64.3% of its members in the hall and one package before it: the amendment to the 2026 budget that the government submitted on 20 August. In the parliament's own summary the case is four numbers. The economy grew 7.6% over seven months, exports reached $12 billion, up 57%, and the government wants ₮250,000 ($70) a month more for 435,000 pensioners and 20 to 50% more for 149,000 state employees. Both increases are permanent. Both begin in the year's last two months, and the full bill arrives in 2027, the year the government's own draft budget suspends the spending cap.
Kazakhstan's central bank forecasts at $89 oil, and names next year's fiscal stimulus as the limit on its cuts
The National Bank cut its base rate to 16.25% on Friday and told the market why the room below it is limited: next year's budget will spend more, and the extra comes from the National Fund. The bank's own forecast runs on $89 oil this year. The budget law now in force was written at $60.
Kazakhstan's central bank decides with its first sub-10% print and Brent 58% above the budget's price
The National Bank of Kazakhstan announces its base-rate decision at 12:00 Astana time on Friday with August inflation at 9.8%, the first reading under 10% since the bank began cutting in June, and Brent at $95. The budget the bank is asked to protect was written at $60 a barrel and 540 tenge to the dollar; the market has delivered $95 and 456.
KazMunayGas takes $500 million of the $658 million its dollar bondholders offered
Holders of KazMunayGas's 5.375% notes due 2030 tendered $658.1 million by the early deadline of 2 September, the company said on Thursday. It will buy $500 million of them, the cap it set in August, at a proration factor of 73.1%, and settle on 4 September.
Uzbekistan's governors get 3.2 trillion soums to lend after 17% of last year's new firms close
Shavkat Mirziyoyev told a meeting on poverty on Thursday that 15,000 of the 86,000 small enterprises created in the regions over the past year have already stopped work, and that about 62,000 citizens are struggling to repay the bank loans that started their businesses. His answer puts the lending decision in headquarters run by the hokims, the regional and district governors.
The OPEC Fund lends Dushanbe $30 million for 82 km of the road to China
The Vienna-based fund will finance the first stage of the Rushan to Varzesh reconstruction in Gorno-Badakhshan, 82.2 of 235 km on the corridor that runs from Dushanbe through Kulma to the Chinese border, Asia-Plus reported on Wednesday.