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The Regions This Week
October 5, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 9
Eurasia
Mongolia aims to earn $1bn per annum from its gold-mining sector in the coming years, Minister of Mining and Heavy Industry Dolgorsuren Sumiyabazar said. In 2017, the state budget earned $800mn from 20.01 tonnes of gold submitted to the central bank by gold miners.
Tajikistan’s government is reportedly deploying troops to the eastern city of Khorugh, for a “special operation”, Stratfor reported citing exiled opposition figures. The geopolitical intelligence platform believes the possibility of a new conflict is growing due to troop deployment in the Gorno- Badakhshan region.
The supervisory board of the Moscow Exchange (MOEX) will buy an equity stake in the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE), Russian TASS news agency reported. MOEX will acquire up to 20% of KASE in two stages by end-2019 for a total of RUB338mn (€4.44mn).
Uzbek officials denied that the disgraced daughter of late autocrat Karimov has been freed after RFE/RL discovered that a person giving the name Gulnara Karimova had turned up with an entourage and security guards to book rooms in a Dubai hotel.
French retail giant Carrefour opened its second store in Armenia. Majid Al Futtaim Group opened the first Carrefour supermarket under a franchise with the France-based retailer in Yerevan in 2015.
Iran accused Saudi Arabia and Russia of break- ing OPEC’s agreement on output cuts by produc- ing more crude. In comments reported by Iran’s official agency for energy news SHANA, Iran’s OPEC governor Hossein Kazempour Ardebili also warned that the two countries would not be able to produce enough oil to make up for any reduc- tion in Iranian exports caused by US sanction.
Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan Automobile Plant plans to produce electric cars, the company’s director Musa Abdullayev told Trend. More than 5,000 conventional cars have been produced at the plant so far.
Luxembourg-based IFG Capital plans to invest $300mn in the development of seven tungsten deposits in Uzbekistan, aiming to raise production to 6% of global output. The plans mark the first foreign direct investment in the Central Asian nation’s mining and metals sector since President Shavkat Mirziyoyev came to power in 2016.
The ADB endorsed a new five-year country partnership strategy for Kyrgyzstan for the 2018-2022 period and expects to provide $641mn in grants and foreign loans throughout its duration. The investments will focus on “energy, transport, education, public sector management, water supply and sanitation, and agriculture”.
Georgia will “one day” join the Nato military alliance, its secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said, 10 years after the bloc first promised
the former Soviet republic it would become
a member.
Kazakhstan officially launched the Nurly Zhol- Khorgos checkpoint at its border with China. The Nurly Zhol checkpoint is part of the Europe- China land transport corridor, which is being developed as part of China’s One Belt One
Road initiative.
Two Iranian web listing firms are close to merging. Property website Alounak.com and listings website Sheypoor.com are part of a sector that has seen record growth in recent years, with several Western-style copycat websites seeing business grow as younger Iranians move online.