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The Regions This Week
March 16, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 8
Eurasia
Four Central Asian presidents met at the first re- gional summit since 2009 in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana. The summit was planned given the grow- ing reputation of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirzi- yoyev as the torchbearer of Central Asian coopera- tion, in contrast to his predecessor Islam Karimov who died in late 2016. As well as Mirziyoyev and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the at- tendees were Kyrgyz President Sooronbai Jeenbe- kov and Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.
The odds on the Trump administration killing the Iran nuclear deal substantially shortened with the firing-by-tweet of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his replacement with CIA chief and foreign policy hawk Mike Pompeo. Tillerson has in the past year openly disagreed with Donald Trump's desire to see the accord scrapped but Pompeo has called the deal “disastrous”.
The Front for the State of Armenia, a newly- formed Armenian opposition movement, staged a protest against Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan in Yerevan. Sargsyan is expected to become the next prime minister after his second term as president ends in April, with Armenia switching to a parliamentary form of governance.
Rio Tinto’s Turquoise Hill Resources received a request to provide financial information to the Mongolian Anti-Corruption Authority (ACA). Turquoise Hill, which operates flagship gold and copper mine Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia, said it had no indication that Oyu Tolgoi itself is the subject of an investigation.
Russia’s Energy Minister Aleksander Novak said
Iran could join the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) by May. Tehran wants membership of the trade bloc partly to create a bulwark against US sanctions faced by both Iran and Russia.
An Astana court branded the political opposition movement Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) an extremist organisation. The court
ruled that the DVK, established by fugitive
banker Mukhtar Ablyazov, "propagates the forcible change of Kazakhstan’s constitutional order”.
Several thousand Azerbaijanis gathered to
protest in Baku against the snap presidential election scheduled for April 11. Organisers Musavat and the National Council of Democratic Forces (NCDF) called for a boycott of the ballot.
Russian oil company Zarubezhneft signed deals worth more than $700mn with the National Iran Oil Company (NIOC) to develop the Aban and Western Paydar oil fields in a consortium with private sector Iranian oil services company
Dana Energy.
The Uzbek foreign trade ministry discussed
the possibility of Uzbekistan acceding to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at an event supported by the UNDP and attended by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank and USAID.
Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk- Kazyna reportedly offered Royal Dutch Shell the chance to buy a 10-20% stake in state-run oil company National Company KazMunayGaz (NC KMG). Such a transaction would make the planned IPO of NC KMG in 2019 more attractive to foreign investors.
FDI in Georgia rose by 16.2% y/y to $1.8bn in 2017, recovering to pre-2008-financial crisis levels. Despite a 13.6% y/y contraction in its investments to $482.1mn, Azerbaijan remains the leading foreign investor in the country.
Uzbek and Tajik businesspeople signed deals worth $620mn during a business forum hosted as part of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s first official visit to Tajikistan. Uzbek agency Uztrade, which assists small and private businesses
and farmers with exports, has a new branch in Dushanbe.