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The Regions This Week
August 24, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 8
Eurasia
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to visit the South Caucasus states of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan following her August 18 meetings outside of Berlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The trip is to begin with a stop in Georgia on August 23. She will then move on to Armenia and finally to Azerbaijan.
A cargo airline owned by a company with past ties to Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family won some lucrative contracts from the US military, according to documents obtained in 2016 through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed in the US by a reporter for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
Kazakhstan’s manufacturing sector grew 5.2% y/y in the first half of 2018, the official website of the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan has reported. The main drivers of growth behind the sector’s expansion were engineering, the chemical indus- try, food production, metallurgy, oil refining and construction materials production.
Kyrgyzstan’s economy has switched from growth to contraction. It shrunk by 0.2% y/y in the first seven months of 2018, compared to the 6.2%
y/y growth recorded in the same period of 2017, according to the National Statistical Committee. When the flagship Kumtor gold mine’s contribu- tion to Kyrgyz GDP is subtracted, the economy grew by 2.2% y/y, compared to the 2.6% y/y growth recorded for the same period of 2017.
Azerbaijan's GDP growth slowed to 0.2% y/y in the first seven months of this year, down from the 1.3% y/y recorded for the first half. Non-oil GDP rose 0.9% y/y in 7m18, versus 2.0% growth in the first half of 2018, while the oil and gas sec- tor showed a 0.9% y/y contraction compared with 0.2% growth over the first half of 2018.
Fitch Ratings has affirmed Azerbaijan-based Pasha Bank's (PB’s) Long-Term Issuer-Default
Rating (IDR) at 'B+', with a Stable Outlook. The rating agency said in a report on the assess- ment: “Positively the ratings reflect the bank's reasonable financial metrics, comfortable capital (albeit somewhat weaker on a standalone basis) and liquidity positions in the last 12 months. They also factor in PB's systemic importance (market shares of 13% by total assets and 18% by deposits at end-1Q18).
Kazakhstan’s largest lender by assets, Halyk Bank, raised its 2018 profit guidance on August 22 to over KZT214bn tenge ($592mn), up from KZT207bn. Halyk chief executive Umut Shay- akhmetova said during a briefing that the bank expected faster loan book growth this year com- bined with higher interest income and a positive impact from loan recoveries. Halyk Bank also posted a 40% y/y plunge in second-quarter profit this week.
China’s state energy group China National Pe- troleum Corp (CNPC) has completed an upgrade at Kazakhstan’s Shymkent refinery. The upgrade started in June last year and raises the plant’s fuel quality to the Euro IV and V standards from the previous Euro II.
A total of 1.895mn tonnes of grain had been threshed in Kazakhstan this year as of August 20, just 0.07% less than the indicator for the same period of last year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture of Kazakhstan. The average yield was 18.9 quintals per hectare, 3.85% more
than last year.
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) expects to pump about 60mn tonnes of CPC Blend BFO- CPC crude oil via the Kazakhstan-to-Russia CPC pipeline this year, down from the previous plan for 67mn tonnes. The CPC pipeline system, which features the 1,511 km-long Tengiz-Novorossiysk Pipeline, transports over two-thirds of all Kazakh crude oil exports.