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The Regions This Week
September 7, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 10
Eurasia
Trucks traveling to and from Tajikistan have been stranded at the border of Turkmenistan for approximately two weeks. The blockade, whose causes are unknown, is affecting around 50 Tajik trucks carrying primary aluminum to Turkey and 100 Iranian trucks travelling to Tajikistan.
Mongolia asked Russia to provide financial assistance worth $1.5bn for joint projects in the energy sector, including the modernisation of HPP-3 and HPP-4 hydropower plants. During winter, both heating and power plants rely heavily on coal in Mongolia's capital Ulaanbaatar, which accounts for almost half of the country’s population.
A nappy shortage hit Iran as the ongoing forex turmoil left producers without raw materials. Iranian government officials have said that they will do their level best to address shortages of nappies, incontinence pads and sanitary towels now besetting the country.
Uzbekistan officially legalised the activities of virtual currency trading exchanges. Two months earlier, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a decree aimed at encouraging the de- velopment and integration of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology in Uzbekistan.
Azerbaijan has spent more than $5bn on Rus- sian military products, and purchases are on an upward trend, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said. Russia controversially supplies both sides of the conflict between neighbouring Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno Karabakh enclave.
The Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) is provid- ing around €50.9mn to support construction of new Kazakh car plant. The funds provided by the EDB will finance the construction of a car assem- bly plant in Ust-Kamenogorsk in partnership with Russia’s AvtoVaz car manufacturer, mostly known for its Lada brand.
The situation in Armenia is “still boiling” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The diplomat’s comment mainly concerned the inves- tigations into the events of March 2008 in which anti-government protests were bloodily put down.
The Georgian separatist republic of Abkhazia was the second most popular destination for Russian tourists in the first half of this year, at- tracting 1.75mn Russian visitors, according to
a report from tourism agency Turstat.
Social media users in Azerbaijan are dancing
on video to express solidarity with their eth-
nic kin in northern Iran, Eurasianet reported.
The dancing campaign is said to have spread north of the Iran-Azerbaijan border, where Insta- gram and Twitter users posted their own videos using the name of the song as it is rendered in the Latin alphabet used in Azerbaijan, #sənideyirlər.
Tajikistan increased its electricity exports to Uzbekistan to 471mn kWh as of July, marking a fourfold expansion since the country relaunched its electricity exports to its Central Asian neigh- bour in April.
Uzbek lawmakers put forward a bill to crimi- nalise begging. The draft law, proposed by Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, could be taken to contradict much of the president’s work so far in liberalising Uzbekistan.
The National Bank of Georgia kept the refinancing rate unchanged at 7.0%. The bank noted that an- nual inflation has decreased since the beginning of this year, moving around the target rate of 3%.
France's Sanofi agreed to pay $25mn to set- tle corruption charges partly linked to its Ka- zakh units. The company neither agreed with nor denied the findings that it had made corrupt payments to win business, the US Securities and Exchange Commission said.