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The Regions This Week
October 26, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 6
Eurasia
Tajikistan imported nearly 10mn cubic metres (cm) of natural gas from neighbouring Uzbeki- stan in the six months since the April resumption of Uzbek gas flows to the Tajiks after a six-year break. Before April, Uzbekistan had not exported natural gas to Tajikistan since 2012, a year in which it exported 370mn cm of gas to its neigh- bour; the annual figure used to stand at around 1bn cm in the early 2000s.
The Iranian Supreme Court upheld death sen- tences for two financial traders convicted of illegal forex trading and “disrupting the economy”. The ruling is seen as a warning to the general public not to attempt to profiteer off the curren- cy's severe decline amid the reimposition of US sanctions on Tehran.
Kazakhstan’s second-biggest lender Tsesna- bank will sell domestic bonds worth KZT500bn (€1.2bn) on the Kazakh Stock Exchange in four issues with maturities of five to 15 years. The bank has previously taken out an emergency central bank loan of KZT150bn to boost its liquid- ity, and received state-support worth KZT450bn last month to improve its financial strength.
Georgia will hold presidential elections on Octo- ber 28. Ruling coalition-backed presidential can- didate Salome Zurabishvili currently has the lead in advance of the vote with support from around 31% of the electorate, according to a recent poll.
Ukraine complained to the World Trade Or- ganization over anti-dumping duties imposed by Armenia and Kyrgyzstan on certain types of Ukrainian steel pipes. Kyiv said the two countries should have phased out duties that were "higher than necessary, erroneous and based on deficient rulings, procedures and provisions", Reuters re- ported.
Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian's efforts to force early elections in Armenia cleared another
legal hurdle when the parliament agreed not to reappoint him as PM a week after his tactical res- ignation. Pashinian came to power in this spring’s "velvet revolution" but controls only a handful of seats in the parliament.
An adviser to Kyrgyzstan’s former president was detained in Russia and brought back to his home country. Law enforcement authorities are hold- ing Ikramjan Ilmiyanov, advisor and deputy chief of office of ex-president Almazbek Atambayev, on suspicion of financial fraud.
Azerbaijani chocolate maker Ulduz is looking to break into the Belarusian and Iranian markets. Ulduz presently sells its sweet treats in countries including Georgia, Russia and Turkmenistan, but Iranian market might prove more challenging.
The Trump administration signalled it will permit Iranian banks to remain connected to the SWIFT worldwide financial telecommunica- tion system following refusals from Europe to cut Tehran out of the system.
Mongolian consumer price inflation was re- corded at 5.7% y/y in September, according to the latest national statistics office data. The headline figure continued the trend set last year — annual inflation stood at 6.4% in 2017, compared to the 1.1% seen in 2016.
Uzbekistan and the US signed agreements worth $2.5bn at the annual Uzbek-American business forum. They reportedly included a $2bn deal be- tween Air Products and state-run Uzbekneftegaz on promising gas processing projects, including industrial gases production.
Three Iranian sailors died after a poisoning incident on a ship transporting Kazakh wheat. Azerbaijani officials are investigating the theory that the seamen were killed through exposure to a chemical used to preserve the cargo.