Page 8 - bne_newspaper_August_3_2018

The Regions This Week
August 3, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 8
Eurasia
The IMF questioned Uzbekistan’s official GDP growth data, which it said was at odds with an observed boom in exports and investments as well as improvements in price competitiveness. Tashkent reported 5.3% growth in 2017, which looked like a slowdown compared to earlier rates — which, however, were widely understood to be fabricated by the previous regime.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on July 31 said Moscow is "concerned" that Armenia's new government is making politically motivated moves against former leaders targeted by an anti-corruption campaign. His remarks came after former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan was charged with violently putting down protests against his successor Serzh Sargsyan in 2008.
Kazakhstan dispatched its first batch of ice cream to China. Shin-Line’s 10 tonnes of ice cream exports are to feature among multiple other food products that Kazakhstan is aiming to export to its eastern neighbour.
Tajikistan lifted its travel ban on the critically ill grandson of an exiled opposition leader so that he may receive medical treatment abroad. Ibro- him Hamza Tillozoda, the grandson of Muhiddin Kabiri, has life-threatening stage-3 testicular can- cer that doctors in Tajikistan have failed to treat.
India’s Kolkata-based Emami Group cosmetics maker intends to enter Iran by the end of this year despite the US sanctions campaign that
is taking a heavy toll on the Islamic Republic’s economy. Rival European cosmetics manufactur- ers who bet big on Iran in recent years have found themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place given the impending sanctions.
The Central Bank of Azerbaijan maintained the discount rate at 10%, the bank’s chairman Elman Rustamov said. In 2018, inflation has remained below the target corridor, and has been on a downward trend in the first six months of the year.
The Constitutional Court in Tbilisi abolished ad- ministrative punishments, making Georgia the first former Soviet Republic to legalise mari- juana use. The ruling by four senior court judges concerns only the consumption of cannabis, while cultivation and selling remain a crime, the court said in its ruling.
The Kyrgyz central bank and Islamic Development Bank (IDB) are seeking investors to launch
an Islamic bank in Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz authorities have been working with the IDB since last year to establish a commercial bank and an investment fund aimed at financing MSMEs.
Turkish teacher, Veysel Akcay, who was alleg- edly kidnapped in the Mongolian capital of Ul- aanbaatar and taken to the city’s airport, was released after the Mongolian authorities tempo- rarily grounded an aeroplane. Akcay is associated with the network of US-based self-exiled Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who is blamed by the Turkish authorities for supposedly organising the failed 2016 coup in Turkey.
Kazakhstan’s Single Accumulative Pension
Fund resigned from its position as a shareholder in SAT & Company, a Kazakh industrial hold-
ing representing over 30 companies operating in ferroalloys, chromium, nickel and other sectors. The reason behind the pension fund’s resignation was unclear - however, the fund has been at- tempting to decrease its exposure to risky assets in the past year.