Archive for January 8th, 2008
Bankers of All Post-Soviet Countries, Unite!
Dosim Satpaev, the director of Risk Assessment Group for Exclusive, again. The original version in English can be found here, the Russian version is here.
Since August, the banking sector of Kazakhstan has attracted a special attention from society, first of all, in the view of its financial stability. But the event that took place on 12th December indicates the optimism and trust in the future from the side of our banking structures.
In Almaty it was officially announced about the establishment of Eurasian club of Bankers. We should mention here that on 26th September of 2007, during the 8th Almaty Interbank Conference “High growth banking systems of CIS”, the initiator of which was the “Bank TuranAlem” (BTA), memorandum of this club’s establishment was accepted.
As it is known, the idea itself was made public by the President of Republic of Kazakhstan N.A. Nazarbaev in the economic forum held in St. Petersburg on 10th June of 2007. And already this week, the constituent agreement was signed not only by the trustworthy banks such as Bank TuranAlem, KazKom, Alliance Bank, and Bank CenterCredit, but also by the Association of financiers of Kazakhstan, Association of Russian banks and Financial-Banking group of CIS.
There could be several reasons for the establishment of this club. Particularly, despite the fact that there is a range of regional organizations in the territory of former Soviet Union, which has such functions as development of multilateral economic cooperation, not any of them has the opportunities to perform this function in full measure because of wide dispersion of directions of its activity and certain bureaucratization. On terms of globalization and on the verge of possible joining of Kazakhstan and other CIS countries in WTO, it becomes necessary to consolidate the efforts of different fields of economy in order to uphold and further your own corporative interests on regional and global levels. It also concerns the financial institutes of post-soviet states.
News Roundup - January 8, 2008
European Research Headlines: EU and Kazakhstan working for a brighter future
The collapse of the USSR 17 years ago put the former Soviet republics on the map once again. Kazakhstan, the ninth largest country in the world, has initiated and finalised a number of reforms over the years…
TREND: Kazakhstan Consider Acquisition of Oil Fields in Russia
The issue concerning acquisition of the oil fields in Russia has already considered due to purchase of shares of the Pavlodar Petrochemical plant, which is processing the Russian oil…
Reuters: Gulf investors buy 29 percent of UK’s Victoria Oil
Abu Dhabi-based investment house Noor Capital said on Saturday it was acquiring 29 percent of UK’s Victoria Oil and Gas Plc along with a consortium of UAE and Gulf investors…
Regnum: Kazakh expert: The gist of idea of Central Asian Alliance is pragmatism
“The gist of the Kazakhstan’s idea of the Central Asian Alliance is in making all Central Asian countries come to a common denominator. It is not the question of leadership.”
Neweurasia.net: Kazakhs push for Central Asian Alliance, deny ambitions
The news has come from the Regnum.Ru agency — first deputy director of the Kazakh Institute for Strategic Studies under the Kazakhstan’s President once again voiced the idea of the Central Asian Alliance, which had been earlier repeatedly put forward by N.Nazarbayev…
Gazeta.KZ: December inferiority complex
There is a month in a year which is not in favor of Kyrgyz and Tajik people. It is December. As usually, in this period Dushanbe and Bishkek hold hard talks with official Tashkent about the price for supplied by Uzbekistan natural gas…
Eurasianet: Turkmenistan: “Gas-rich” residents shiver in the cold
As Russia, Iran, China, and Europe all vie for a piece of Ashgabat’s natural-gas pie, many ordinary Turkmen have been left shivering out in the cold — despite official promises of free gas…
Financial Times: Investors seek adventure across Asia’s new frontiers
Recent months have seen a burst of interest in Asian “frontier markets” – countries where stock markets are so small they fail to qualify as emerging markets, and that are difficult for foreign investors to buy into, but have potential to grow rapidly…
Resource Investor: PetroChina postpones startup of Dushanzi oil refinery
“The bad weather hasn’t really hindered construction progress and delivery of crude supplies from Kazakhstan will proceed as planned,” an official with PetroChina Dushanzi Petrochemical, surnamed Liu, said. “However, we encountered problems in purchasing some equipment and now aim to bring the refinery online in the latter half of this year.”
