The decree, signed by Prime Minister Karim Massimov on September 5, was published in the national press last Saturday, September 17. The new export duty rates will come into force from September 27.

According to the decree, the new export duty rate for light petroleum products will be US$143.54 per ton (the current rate is US$114.05 per ton), with the rate for heavy petroleum products standing at US$95.69 per ton (the current rate is US$76.03 per ton).

Export duties on crude oil, which have been reintroduced last year at US$20 per ton, before doubling the tariff to US$40 from January 1, 2011, will remain at the same level.

The cabinet expects to raise KZT421.40 billion (around US$2.8 billion) from introducing the new exports duty by the end of the 2011, the Ministry of Finance has said.

The state budget revenues paid in the form of export duty on crude oil made up US$1.67 billion for the first half of 2011, Vice Finance Minister Ruslan Dalenov wrote in his Twitter account July 22.

Energy-rich Kazakhstan had introduced the export duty on crude in May 2008 at the height of the Global Financial Crisis, but reduced them to zero in January 2009 after crude prices plunged.

Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s largest economy, has doubled crude output over the past decade to become the second-biggest oil producer in the former Soviet Union after Russia. It produced 79.5 million tons of oil and gas condensate in 2010, 4.2 percent up against 2009.

Foreign oil companies control a significant proportion of crude production in Kazakhstan, which holds slightly more than 3 percent of the world’s recoverable oil reserves.

The Chevron-led Tengizchevroil venture is the country’s largest oil producer, while Chinese companies control nearly a quarter of output.

Currently Kazakhstan is facing fuel shortages and fuel price hikes, tengerinews.kz reports. The Oil and Gas Ministry along with the State Agency for Monopolies Control have repeatedly stated that measures will be taken to stabilize the fuel market.

According to the Oil and Gas Ministry estimation, the national oil production output in 2011 will make up 81 million tons, growing to 83 million tons in 2012-2013, to 85 million tons in 2014 and to 95 million tons by 2015.

According to the stats, crude and condensed gas production output for the first seven months of 2011 totaled 46.6 million tons.

The bill, approved early Friday, is designed to overhaul Ukraine’s Soviet-era pension system as the government seeks to slash spending in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis.

Ukraine’s parliament approved a government bill on pension reform at first reading on June 16.

The parliament discussed amendments to the document all night (consideration of the bill lasted 8.5 hours) before passing the final text in the early hours of Friday. It is expected to be signed into law soon by President Viktor Yanukovych.

The bill, which will enter into force on September 1, would gradually raise the retirement age for women from 55 to 60 years and increase by 10 years the period when workers make salary contributions to their retirement funds. The retirement age of male civil servants men was raised to 63 years.

The adopted bill stipulates the maximum pension cannot exceed 10 times the living wage, which is currently around US$95 a week. Previously, the maximum amount was 12 time.

The bill also decreases from 90 percent to 80 percent the wage for calculating pensions for civil servants. The maximum pension is limited to 10 minimum incomes (some US$1,000 at present).

The Ukrainian government put forward a draft pension reform bill parliament last year in a bid to overcome the Pension Fund’s growing annual deficit and to meet IMF requirements. But its passage has been postponed several times.

As a result the IMF froze funding this year because of the failure to pass the bill, and the government hopes the aid will resume once the law is passed. The bill now awaits presidential approval to become law.

“If the parliament will vote for the pension reform, in early August we can get the decision of the IMF Board of Directors,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for Social Policies Sergei Tigipko said to reporters.

Tigipko suggested that the two tranches of the IMF might be combined. “We might be able to obtain two tranches simultaneously – about US$3 billion, which will be added to the foreign exchange reserves of the National Bank.”

According to official data, Ukraine has the world’s largest share of spending on pensions – 18 percent of GDP in 2010. Moreover, one of the highest levels of pension contributions in Europe, representing 35 percent of gross salary. In addition, despite that in 2010 an amount equivalent to 7 percent of GDP was transferred from the budget to the pension fund.

Martin Raiser, World Bank Director for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova assures that once the bill is be signed by the Ukrainian president to come into force, it will allow annual savings on pension costs amounting to about 1.5 percent of GDP starting 2012. And till 2015 Pension Fund deficit budget financing will disappear.

According to the survey, conducted by the Gorshenin Institute on June 11-13 2011, 52.3 percent of interviewed respondents living in Ukraine’s regional centers, cities, towns and villages, including Kiev and Sevastopol, agree that the pension reform is definitely necessary.

At the same time, only 6.7 percent of respondents are taking some actions to ensure their financial security upon retirement, while 68.3 percent of respondents, as it was in Soviet time, are “doing nothing and count on a state pension.”

More than 150 investment banks from Wall Street, Europe and Asia-Pacific made pitches to the Mongolian government over the past few days to win the coveted underwriting mandate for the Tavan Tolgoi coal mine. Sources said a decision is expected within two weeks.

According to the pitching process participants, the size of the offering could vary from US$1.5 billion to US$5 billion, depending on timing.

Tavan Tolgoi is located in the South Gobi desert 400 kilometers from the nearest railway line and lacks infrastructure and power, its estimated reserves amount to 6-6.5 billion tons.

No one can be considered in prime position to win the mandate yet. Citigroup, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, and ING as well as Goldman Sachs, UBS and Deutsche Bank are among the groups in the running.

Dealmakers reckon the government may end up mandating as many as five or six banks for the IPO, The Financial Times speculates.

Some suggest that JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank are in a good position, since both banks were hired by the Mongolian government for its original plan – now scrapped – to sell 49 percent of the Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit to a foreign bidder. JPMorgan and Citigroup can also tout the fact that they arranged the Hong Kong IPO of Mongolia Mining Corp. last October.

MMC, Mongolia’s largest privately held producer of coking coal, rose about US$700 million in the deal.

Mongolia sits on vast quantities of untapped mineral wealth. Analysts say it could be one of the fastest growing economies of the next decade, as well as a key investment target for global mining giants.

Mining accounted for over 60 percent of total FDI in the country last year.

Coking coal is in great demand in neighboring China, as well as other big Asian buyers such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

The government plans to keep 51 percent of Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi stake.

“Ten percent of the shares will be given to every citizen of Mongolia,” Algar Namgar, executive director of the Mongolian National Mining Association, told Reuters. “And 10 percent of the shares will be traded to every Mongolian enterprise.”

Global coal prices have shot up in recent months due to disruptions in several coal-producing countries, including Australia, Indonesia, and South Africa, while demand in Asia, particularly China and India, continues to grow.

The price of Australian thermal coal, a benchmark for Asia, has risen 34 percent from a year ago to around US$127 a ton while spot prices for coking coal used by steelmakers have shot up more than 50 percent from a year ago to hover around US$370 a ton.

The new version will be drafted by the president’s office and the government together with representatives of small businesses.

Thousands of entrepreneurs have been rallying across the country for two weeks protesting a reform passed by the parliament that would have made thousands of entrepreneurs no longer eligible for generous tax breaks.

On November 18, Ukraine’s legislature adopted the new tax code that basically abolishes simplified taxation, raises the income tax, and restricts the use of tax benefits. The legislation needed the president’s signature to become law.

The demonstrators say the tax code passed by the Verkhovna Rada is tilted toward the rich and big companies, and will punish small and medium-sized enterprises.

“I vetoed [the tax code] today,” Yanukovych told reporters after a government meeting.

“Protests in Kiev are a manifestation of the democratic process in Ukraine. It is normal and I welcome it,” he added.

The move shows his unwillingness to sacrifice popularity for the sake of reforms, analysts said.

It could also mean that other painful measures, especially those required by an International Monetary Fund program, will be delayed or canceled.

Proponents of the legislation, led by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, had argued the changes were necessary to balance the national budget and reduce tax evasion.

Ukraine needs to cut its budget deficit to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2011 from the 5 percent to 5.5 percent expected this year under its US$15 billion deal with the IMF.

While neither the government nor the IMF expected the tax code to immediately boost budget revenues, extending tax breaks for small businesses could make it harder for Ukraine to achieve the deficit target and sets a dangerous precedent.

Political experts agreed in opinion that Yanukovych has exercised his right of veto on the tax code because of fear of escalation of the conflict.

“The authority has reasonably estimated risks of the follow-up protest actions, their considerable scale and nature,” Yury Jakimenko, political analyst said to the Kommersant-Ukraine.

“This is negative for the country,” said Citi analyst Luis Costa said to The Moscow Times. “The market consensus was that Yanukovych was going to approve it despite popular resistance we have seen over the last couple of weeks.”

Next year, under the IMF deal, Ukraine needs to start gradually raising the retirement age for women to 60 from 55 and continue increasing the price of gas for households.

“According to our business plan, capital accumulation should be completed within 9 months” – said Geybatov, who added that US$1 million is needed to provide the bureau with the required software.

The International Finance Corporation estimates that the first independent credit bureau may appear in Azerbaijan 2 years after the related bill has been accepted.

The present Central Credits Register, which is controlled by the country’s central bank, offers credit information which is more individuals-orientated than firms. Credit information is very general, only dividing debtors into positive and negative.

Moreover, Azerbaijan might also accept a law on credit stories, a government official said to the local media.

Both laws are due to help financial institutions make faster and more accurate credit decisions, thereby increasing the availability and affordability of the financial services provided to the country’s individual consumers, and also micro, small, and medium enterprises.

Azerbaijan joined the IFC in 1995. As of December 2008, the IFC committed nearly US$289 million via its own fund, while gathering nearly US$104 million through syndications. IFC’s investments in Azerbaijan were mainly in oil and gas, financial, general manufacturing, and agribusiness sectors.

Last week Minister of Gas and Oil Sauat Mynbaev confirmed government plan to reconsider contracts with foreign mining companies with the exception of the Kashagar deposit which is being developed by joint efforts of Italy’s Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, U.S. Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Japanese Inpex and Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigaz (KMG). KMG is the state-owned oil and gas company responsible for operating state oil and gas interests and pipelines.

The fifth largest in the world in terms of reserves, the Kashagar deposit lies off the northern shore of the Caspian Sea near the city of Atyrau. It’s being explored according to conditions of a special contract known as North Caspian Sea Production Sharing Agreement (PSA). Experts estimate that the field will start production in 2014. According to EIA data, initial production is projected at 450,000 bbl/d with peak production of 1.5 million bbl/d projected for the end of the next decade.

Another project to which the preferential taxation rule extends is Tengiz deposit which produced 377,000 bbl/d of crude oil and 38,000 bbl/d of condensate in 2008, and is the world’s deepest operating giant field at 12,000 feet deep.

The field has been developed since 1993 by the Tengizchevroil (TCO) joint venture, a 40-year US$20 billion agreement between Chevron (50 percent), ExxonMobil (25 percent), Kazmunaigas (20 percent) and LUKArco (5 percent), signed with the Kazakh government in 1993. Capacity is increasing and production is expected to peak at between 750,000 bbl/d and 1 million bbl/d by 2012. The Tengiz field is located along the northeast shore of the Caspian Sea and is the largest source of oil production in the country. Recoverable crude oil reserves have been estimated at 6-9 billion barrels by consortium member Chevron.

The minister Sauat Mynbaev refused to make comments on the situation connected with Tengiz, while noting that a negotiation on Karachaganak is in progress.

According to several reports, Kazakhstan’s economic crimes and corruption agency is now probing “illegal earnings” of 104 billion tenge ($708 million) at Karachaganak, saying that the end of the March the venture profited in 2008 from oil output that wasn’t approved by the state. In response, representatives of the consortium asserted that the venture is confident its business practices comply with Kazakhstani law.

Kazakhstan is cracking down on the Karachaganak Petroleum Operating BV venture while seeking to enter the country’s only major oil development without state participation. The government wants a stake to boost profit from the project, Kairgeldy Kabyldin, the head of state-run energy producer Kazmunaigaz National Co., said earlier to Bloomberg.

The field is operated by Karachaganak Petroleum (KPO) consortium under a production sharing agreement (PSA) which includes Agip and BG (who each own 32.5 percent), Chevron (20 percent), and Lukoil (15 percent). The PSA was signed in 1997 to develop the field for 40 years.

The Karachaganak deposit which lies close to the Russian Border produced 233,000 bbl/d of condensate in 2008 and is one of the world’s largest oil and gas condensate reserves. According to KPO data, the field holds reserves of around 8-9 billion barrels of oil and gas condensate and 47 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Kazakhstan’s law on subsoil and subsoil use governs the transfer of subsoil use rights and was amended in 2005 to give the state the basis to exercise pre-emption rights on any oil assets put up for sale in the country. The law was amended again in 2007 to allow the state to force retrospective changes to any existing oil contracts or even break the contracts if they are deemed a threat to the country’s security. Joint ventures are the most common type of investment; the government announced in early 2008 that no more PSAs will be awarded.

As such, the humble 1 tugrik banknote – the smallest currency denomination in Mongolia, worth roughly US$0.0007 – has re-entered the daily lives of Mongolia’s citizens after being virtually unusable in recent years.

In addition, an end to the impasse between the Mongolian government and the worlds mining corporations looms on the horizon, which would likely ensure that the country comes out of the recession in better shape than it went in.

Mining is crucial to the success of an economy that depends largely on livestock and cashmere wool. Yet the exploitation of international mining companies, coupled with the naivety of Mongolia’s previous government, has led to a ban on mining in Mongolia.

To shed some light on the story, Mongolia’s government had previously allowed foreign mining companies a five-year grace period to set up operations, in an effort to minimize start up costs in their country.

At the end of five years, however, Mongolia found its valuable deposits significantly depleted and some nearly bare. The result being no tax revenues for the Mongolians and free minerals for the world’s mining corporations.

After instilling a long term ban on mining, the situation between the Mongolians and the miners has recently been renegotiated.

Miners, when they do return, are at least likely to find a reasonable economy where a bottle of beer costs the equivalent of 50 cents, and a cashmere lined leather coat is as little as US$250.

How long the 1 tugrik note will stick around as the Mongolian economy expands will be interesting to witness.

The sale could occur as early as this week with a coupon rate of not greater than seven percent, according to Vietnam’s central bank.

“The new issue should have an absolute yield of around 6.85 percent to 7 percent,” said Sergey Dergachev of Frankfurt-based Union Investments. “Vietnam is economically much weaker, with significant twin deficits and a highly managed exchange rate.”

The proceeds of the sale will help fund Vietnam Oil & Gas Group, Vietnam National Shipping Lines, Song Da Corp., and Vietnam Machinery Installation Corp., the State Bank of Vietnam said in a statement on their website.

The sale may also help the floundering Vietnamese dong which depreciated 5.4 percent last year against the dollar and is currently trading at VND18,420 to USD1.

According to a report from Galaxy Securities on Wednesday, monthly new yuan-dominated loans over the next four month are expected to reach 450 billion yuan (USD65.9 billion).

Data from the National Bureau of Statistic showed that fixed-asset investment in China’s urban areas rose to 11.3 trillion yuan, up 33 percent in the first eight months of 2009.

New loans in the first eight months stood at 8.15 trillion yuan, far exceeding the year end target of five trillion yuan, according to the People’s Bank of China.

US$5.2 billion of the funds will go towards infrastructure and development projects, US$1.6 will come in the form of tax breaks for enterprises and individuals, and a further US$400 million will serve welfare purposes.

During the meeting, Minister Phuc also downgraded Vietnam’s expected yearly growth in gross domestic product (GDP) to 5 percent from the original forecast of 6.5 percent.