The Tajik government granted an exploration license to Swiss company Manas Petroleum on Tuesday. The license covers an area of the Ferghana Basin, Central Asia, where the United States Geological Survey estimates recoverable reserves total about 3 billion barrels of oil. In Turkmenistan a joint Russian-Turkmen statement foresaw a 50% increase in gas exports to Russia once pipeline modernisations have been carried out. Meanwhile China announced that 4 million tons of oil had been imported from Kazakhstan since a pipeline connecting the two countries began commercial operations in July 2006.
On the economic scene this week Kazakh national news agency, Kazinform, carries an analysis of the World Bank’s recently released governance report, which contained mixed news for the country. At the same time, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have created a joint investment fund, RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty reports. Turkmenistan’s efforts to boost its economy include the creation of a ‘free economic zone’ along the Caspian shore, to be showcased at the port city of Turkmenbashi later this month. Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper reports on Tajikistan’s success in securing foreign investment while the Turkish Weekly gives a summary of Japan’s own investment in Uzbekistan, said to be worth $2 billion.
Crime and punishment was a preoccupation in the week following Kyrgyzstan’s decision to repeal the death penalty. On Ferghana.ru Ulugbek Babakulov asks whether the change really signals an improvement in the way prisoners are treated. In Uzbekistan, which also plans to abolish capital punishment, two new prisons are being built - one for high-profile political prisoners, another for lifers.
Kyrgyzstan is to tighten the laws governing religious groups, amid official concern over extremism, according to Associated Press. On EurasiaNet, former human rights commissioner Tursunbek Akun suggests that Bakiyev’s regime is more repressive than that of his predecessor.
In other news, just six months to go until the end of the Uzbek president’s final term, RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty reports on the strange absence of campaigning or official announcements. In Tajikistan, a female student who campaigned for the right to wear traditional muslim headscarf in class has lost her case. And in Turkmenistan, which has announced that it will field a team for the 2014 winter olympics, the cult of personality fostered by Niyazov is proving hard to dislodge.
Central Asia Now is taking a summer break. The next news digest, together with another piece of totally original writing on Central Asia, will arrive on 27th July.
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