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Energy
Mirziyoyev decided that the key to promoting foreign direct investment (FDI) and employment in the regions is to have a stable and reliable power supply, hence the first area of economy that saw massive FDI is the power generation.
Uzbekistan has chosen a slightly different approach to attracting FDI into the power generation sector by choosing to sign PPP contracts with major international players. Focusing solely on the electricity purchase price has helped to lessen the burden of choosing equipment suppliers, production process and financing of projects.
The IFC’s Scaling Solar II programme has been expanded into Uzbekistan, which
helped to attract investors such as ACWA Power from Saudi Arabia, MASDAR from UAE and France’s Total Eren, which are key players, into solar, wind and possibly hydro projects. Uzbekistan has announced that there will be 11 projects in hydropower in 2021. Some of these players, such as ACWA Power, are also active in producing electricity from natural gas in Uzbekistan, having signed for a 1,500-MW gas-powered plant in Syrdarya region in January 2021.
Need for a Streamlined Process
Due to the speed and pace of the reforms, it seems like institutional capacity is having a hard time catching up. Even when presidential decrees and a decree of the Cabinet of Ministers
have been issued authorising such privatisations, due to the sheer number of decrees issued (4,000 over the last two years), the execution of some of them is bound to fall behind.
This was noted in the presidential speech, and perhaps a more structured approach and the establishment of processes and systems will allow supporting the President’s intentions and beginnings at much wider level, than focusing on a single decree.
Fiezullah Saidov is the director of the Uzbekistan Equity Fund based in Tashkent and also a consultant to the International Financial Corporation (IFC).
Did sanctions evading Iran put together fake Armenian airline to buy planes?
Iulian Ernst in Bucharest
The story of a 22-year-old Boeing 737 making an emergency landing in Iran has caused a ruckus in the airline community following its sale to Iranian carrier Caspian Airlines at the end of February.
As initially reported by bne IntelliNews, on February 21, a Boeing 737-300 registered to Fly Armenia Airways, only founded in October 2019 and possessing only that one aircraft and never having operated a commercial flight in history, has raised plenty of eyebrows.
The aircraft was meant to fly from Tallinn to Yerevan, but was given a
new flight plan to fly onwards towards Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, but it then disappeared over the skies of Iran, a country that struggles to acquire passenger jets because of the grip of US sanctions on its economy.
The aircraft was at first thought to
have been hijacked, causing panic in Armenia and the UAE, but it was later found to have made a rather convenient
emergency landing in Tehran, media reports suggested.
Newspapers in Armenia on February 24 reported confusion as to how an Arme- nian-registered Boeing 737 aircraft that took off in Estonia for a flight to Yerevan came to be diverted to land in Iran.
The One Mile At A Time aviation website, citing the events as "the most interesting airline story of 2021", carried a nonsensical message from Armenia Airways posted on Facebook, reading: "Dear colleagues, We inform you that today’s press conference will not be held. The reason for the delay of the press conference is not to arrive from the Islamic Republic of Iran.
We apologize."
"It is surprising"
Analyst and expert on US foreign policy Suren Sargsyan warned that the incident, involving an aircraft with no passengers as it was on a technical f light, could invoke US sanctions, writing in a Facebook post: "[The
aircraft] was given or sold to Iran
in unknown circumstances, and it is surprising how the aviation authorities have allowed that to happen, given the international sanctions against Iran. The aircraft was supposed to arrive
in Armenia days ago but landed in Tehran instead.
"I'd just like to remind you that any entity (state) that sells products prohibited
by US law to Iran may be subject to American sanctions."
Hakob Tshagharyan, a former aide to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, was quoted by local press as saying that the plane flying from the Estonian capital was "hijacked" half-way into its flight and taken to Iran.
"On February 21, the Civil Aviation Committee of Armenia received a cable from the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority about an aircraft hijacking involving a Boeing 737 registered
in Armenia," Tshagharyan wrote on Facebook.
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