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bne May 2020
See no virus evil, hear no virus evil, speak no virus evil in Turkmenistan
bne IntelliNews
Plainclothes agents in Turkmenistan’s capital Ashgabat have reportedly been nabbing people uttering the word “coronavirus” or discussing the pandemic in public.
RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service reported the worrying development in the remote, tightly controlled country, which has an official coronavirus (COVID-19) infection count of zero.
The word "coronavirus" is also said to have disappeared from newly published state brochures on disease prevention in authoritarian Turkmenistan, which borders Iran, a country that has experienced one of the world’s worst COVID-19 outbreaks. Instead of instructing citizens on ways to prevent the spread of the virus, altered brochures replace the word "coronavirus" with "illness" and "acute respiratory diseases", among other terms.
An anonymous source in Turkmenistan’s Ministry of Health and the medical industry has told independent news website turkmen.news that one Turkmen died after contracting the virus in the ex-Soviet nation’s Lebap Region.
First claim of Central Asia infection
RFE/RL reported earlier in March that at least two Turkmen had tested positive for the virus at a hospital near Ashgabat,
Companies & Markets I 21
Is there more than one wise monkey in Turkmenistan?
citing claims made by anonymous medical sources. The claims actually amounted to the first report of coronavirus infections in Central Asia, of which there are now officially several hundred, mainly in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Turkmen officials have reportedly been enacting some measures against the spread of the virus, such as discouraging public gatherings and circulating the (now altered) flyers warning citizens to stay alert for respiratory infections.
Separately, it emerged on April 1 that Turkmenistan has suspended the movement of freight traffic via its territory due to the pandemic, according to a foreign ministry document posted online by a Kazakh businessman. Reuters on April 1 confirmed the validity of the document with two anonymous diplomatic sources in Turkmenistan.
The document states that freight transport, including transit shipments, is “restricted” for the entirety of April. No exemptions are made.
Turkmenistan had already closed its borders to passenger traffic.
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Contents
Top stories
Russia’s top retail and tech companies
March 2020
www.intellinews.com
@bneintellinews
join forces to hunt for innovations in rest of the world
Ukraine-born startups raised more than half a billion dollars in 2019 Russian video streaming platforms gain speed
Cloud services take off in Russia SEMrush to SEO success
Leaders
Russia’s internet giant Yandex announces growing and more diversified revenues in 2019 Russian telecom major Rostelecom misses on earnings in 4Q19, cash flow solid
Investment
the
2
4
5 6 8
9
10 12
13
Russia’s top retail and tech companies
join forces to hunt for innovations in
the rest of the world
BAs Russia’s retail and tech sectors consolidate, the leading companies are turned their gaze outwards to hunt for
World Bank approves $35mn project
to modernise Kyrgyz tax administration and statistical system 13 Romanian online home decoration
retailer raises €3.5mn in bonds 14 Russian billionaires Abramovich, Gutseriev, said to invest in Telegram
crypto project TON 14 Russian fund Da Vinci Capital gets
€30mn from Germany’s DEG to invest
in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan 15
Fintech & E-commerce 16
Russian e-commerce major
Wildberries to add self-employed
vendor products to offering 16 Russian Dixy retailer to launch online sales with Ozon 17 Valuation of Sistema’s e-commerce
asset Ozon boosted to $1.8bn 17
Telecom 19
Makedonski Telekom’s net profit
up 6% y/y in 2019 19 Romanian telco Digi grows by double
digit rates in 2019 19 Russia could postpone 5G rollout
from 2022 to 2024 20
NIBs 21
bne:Tech
new technology and innovation.
See page 2
Ukraine-born startups raised more
than half a billion dollars in 2019
In 2019, the venture capital and private equity funding volume for Ukrainian and Ukrainian-founded tech startups reached $544mn (up from $323mn in 2018 and $265mn in 2017), says AVentures Capital’s latest industry report ”DealBook of Ukraine”,
reports Adrien Henni of Ukraine Digital News. See page 4