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The Regions This Week
June 2, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
Eurasia
The default of Azerbaijan’s largest lender IBA stirred worries that Kazakhstan’s Kazkom- mertsbank (KKB) might soon be in severe trou- ble. Though KKB and IBA have no direct links, the Kazakh pension fund has a $250mn bond holding trapped in IBA’s debt restructuring. Kazakhstan plans to merge KKB and Halyk Bank, with its Bad Loans Fund to buy $7.5mn of KKB’s bad loans.
French oil major Total plans to conclude nego- tiations with Iran for its planned multi-billion- dollar investment in the giant South Pars gas field before summer. Talks were held up while Total waited on the Trump administration to renew Obama-era waivers on sanctions imposed on Teh- ran. It did so on May 17.
The Iranian central bank said it is to merge banks weighed down by bad debts in order to meet international debt reduction standards. The move will help Iran in its attempt to reconnect with the global banking system.
Iran’s election watchdog certified President Hassan Rouhani's re-election as fair, dismiss- ing allegations of extensive voter fraud raised by defeated hardline candidate Ebrahim Raisi. His claims centred on polling stations in conservative constituencies that ran out of ballot papers.
Iran achieved GDP growth of 8.3% y/y in the last quarter of the last Iranian year (ended March 20). Excluding oil production and sales, the figure was 6.3% y/y. The central bank will soon publish its own GDP data.
Iran had by May 30 recorded three deaths due to an outbreak of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF), with 28 in isolation in hospital
after contracting the viral infection. CCHF can be passed on to humans via ticks borne by dogs. It is relatively rare in Iran.
France’s Carrefour is closing its Almaty hy- permarket in Kazakhstan just 15 months after
opening it. It blames poor market conditions. Carrefour was the first truly global retail chain to arrive in Kazakhstan. There was even a televised visit of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to the store.
The Nasdaq and Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) are in talks to buy stakes in Kazakhstan’s new stock market, which will be launched as part of the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC). The AIFC is to be a financial services hub run as a free economic zone. The Nasdaq has a deal to provide the AIFC with trading technology.
Kazakhstan, the world's leading uranium pro- ducer, will make nuclear fuel for Chinese power plants from 2019 via a JV with a China General Nuclear (CGN) unit. Chinese firms are already signed up to Kazakh uranium mines development and the building of a nuclear fuel assembly pro- duction plant in Kazakhstan.
A Georgian court has agreed to the extradition of Turkish citizen Mustafa Emre Cabuk, a pri- vate Turkish school manager in Tbilisi accused of links to Hizmet, the movement initiated by cleric Fethullah Gulen who Ankara claims orchestrated last year’s attempted coup in Turkey. Cabuk was arrested two days after Turkish PM Binali Yildirim visited Georgia to sign cooperation deals.
Kyrgyz lawmakers are set to pass a bill re- stricting rights of independent election ob- servers, NGOs say. The presidential election is scheduled for October 15. Kyrgyzstan is once more a consolidated authoritarian regime, Free- dom House says.
Mongolia must break the boom-bust bailout cycle it has been stuck in for 15 years, the IMF said. The IMF has agreed a $5.5bn financial aid package to help Mongolia address crippling debts and reform. Fiscal consolidation, stronger central bank independence and commitment to a market- determined exchange rate are needed, it says.