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The Regions This Week
September 21, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 6
Eurasia
Turkmenistan launched a $1.6bn nitrogen fer- tiliser plant built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp
and Turkey’s Gap Insaat, working with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, on its Caspian coast. The launch of the plant in Garabogaz was a rare piece of bright economic news for Turkmenistan, coming as it does amid pressing budgetary issues that some reports describe as part of a severe finan- cial crisis.
Uzbekistan’s first 900-hectare world-class ski resort, Amirsoy, located in the Bostanlyk district of the Tashkent region, is expected to host its first guests this December. The historical landmarks of Samarkand and Bukhara have long been the main draws for tourism, but the current ruling ad- ministration is looking for opportunities to expand the tourism industry.
India’s ONGC Videsh is exiting the Satpayev oil and gas block in Kazakhstan, according to its managing director Narendra Kumar Verma. The decision follows the completion of the company’s committed work programme to drill two wells, which ended with no commercially viable discovery.
Iran dismissed a US offer of negotiations on a treaty, saying Washington had breached the terms of the last big deal the two countries agreed, namely the nuclear deal. In May US President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of that mul- tilateral accord, which he claimed was not strict enough.
Residents of Armenia’s capital Yerevan will vote for a new mayor on September 23. The vote is seen as the first electoral test for Prime Minis- ter Nikol Pashinian’s government, which came
to power after the ‘people’s revolution’ protests of late April and early May forced the Republican Party out of office.
Georgia’s government moved to abandon two of its most controversial recent steps: the bill to legalise the cultivation of cannabis (for explicit
medicinal purposes and only for export) and the ban on road imports of wheat (for avoiding road congestion). Both bills, announced earlier this month, faced staunch resistance.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrim- ination against Women has criticised Kyrgyzstan for lack of action against bride kidnapping. The committee criticised Bishkek for allowing system- ic human-rights violations as part of a “culture of abduction, rape, and forced marriage”
Mongolian consumer price inflation was recorded at 6% y/y in August, according to 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.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev appointed his aide Alikhan Smailov as finance minister. The move is part of a broader government reshuffle that also saw the appointment of a new presidential chief of staff and mayor of the capital Astana.
Tajikistan’s foreign trade deficit expanded by 26.8% to $1.395bn in the first eight months of 2018. The increase was driven by growing imports, which expanded by 20% y/y to $2.107bn.
Azerbaijani lowcoster Buta Airways added a new Embraer E-190 to its fleet, bringing its total number of planes to seven, all Embraer E-190s. Founded as part of Azerbaijan Airlines in December 2016, Buta is the first — and so far the only — low cost Azerbaijani carrier.
Iran’s Zamyad signed a contract to assemble a vehicle of an as yet unnamed Chinese car producer. Zamyad, famous in Iran for the blue Nissan pickup trucks it has produced for more than 30 years, is the latest of a series of Iranian auto producers to strike production deals with Chinese backing.