Communist Tax Lawyer

After Belarus’ reserves were depleted last year owing to a severe financial crisis, it has achieved the set 2012 target of US$7 billion in forex and gold reserves in the very first week, the National Bank of Belarus said in a statement earlier this month.

As local information agency BelTA reports, the increase in the gold and foreign exchange reserves was facilitated by the second tranche of the EurAsEC Anticrisis Fund loan to the tune of US$440 million and the transfer of part of the syndicated loan provided to OAO Belaruskali by Sberbank of Russia and the Eurasian Development Bank. Read the rest of this entry »

A Russian controlled Gazpromneft-Aero Kyrgyzstan says it will begin supplying 20 percent of aviation fuel required by a vital U.S. air base in Kyrgyzstan from November.

The fuel supply contract was signed last week between U.S. Defense Logistics Agency and Gazpromneft Aero-Kyrgyzstan.

“The Americans have to be certain that we can deal with that volume of supplies. And maybe then [we] will start delivering more than 50 percent of the base’s needs,” said Tilek Isayev, head of the Gazpromneft-Aero Kyrgyzstan. Read the rest of this entry »

Georgia expects foreign investment to double to US$1 billion this year, with energy and tourism sectors leading the way, its economy minister Vera Kobalia said last Wednesday.

Foreign direct investment in Georgia fell 16 percent in 2010 year on year to US$553 million, official data shows, well below the US$1 billion target already set for last year. Nevertheless, FDI still accounted for 5 percent of gross domestic product in 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

Quadrupling Mongolia’s rail network will send coal, copper and rare earths to Japan and South Korea under a plan to reduce dependence on the Chinese market and boost economic development by lowering transportation costs, local and international media reports.

Sandwiched between Russian and China, Mongolia is about to lay 3,542 miles of track across the country and to Russia’s Far Eastern sea ports.

Mongolia has grown increasingly dependent on commerce with China since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. More than 75 percent of exports went to PRC in 2009, according to European Union figures. Read the rest of this entry »

Experts have called Armenia’s Metsamor nuclear power plant “among the most dangerous” nuclear plants still in operation.

The Metsamor nuclear power plant is only 20 miles from Armenia’s capital and most populous Yerevan city. Its location in a seismic zone has drawn renewed attention since Japan’s nuclear crisis, NatGeo magazine said in its article “Is Armenia’s Nuclear Plant the World’s Most Dangerous?”

The power plant Metsamor was built in 1979 and closed in 1989 after an earthquake prompted officials to reconsider the safety of the location. Read the rest of this entry »

Mongolia will have its first nuclear power plant by 2020 and planned to build nuclear fuel production capacity, Tsogtsaikhan Gombo, deputy chairman of state-owned MonAtom LLC has stated this week.

Japan’s recent nuclear disaster is not seen to have a lasting impact on the global nuclear industry, he said.

“We don’t think it’s a big problem for the industry as a whole. It’s a little bit of set-back in time frame, but as a whole it will go on” Gombo said. “We want green development and nuclear is the number one choice.” Read the rest of this entry »

BBC World Service, which is a U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office-funded Broadcasting Services Organization in 32 languages world wide, will close its broadcasting operations in Azeri, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese and Russian, as well as in five languages of Balkan Republics due to the drastic budget cuts by the British government from Saturday March 26.

The broadcasting operations are going to close in Serbian, Portuguese, Macedonian, Albanian, and English in Balkan republics Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo. Read the rest of this entry »

Oil-rich Azerbaijan had its first Facebook-organized rally last Friday.

According to Amnesty International information, about 300 people gathered in the city’s Fountain Square for a rally held by the Musavat opposition party. Several people were also detained on their way to the event by the police.

“There is no justification for heavy-handed tactics to be used against obviously peaceful protestors,” said Natalia Nozadze, Amnesty International’s Azerbaijan expert who was present at the protest. Read the rest of this entry »

A new Latvian law that provides residency rights to foreign investors has provided a boost to the real estate market and nationalist sentiment alike, the BBC reported.

The new amendment to the Latvian Law on Immigration came into force in July, 1, and allows foreign investors and their family members including those from non-EU countries to receive a 5-year residence permit in Latvia along with the right to travel in the Schengen area freely, if they purchase Latvian property of at least 70,000 euros (US$95,000) in value, or invest in a business. Read the rest of this entry »

Turkmenistan is ready to provide the European Union with some 40 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually for the Nabucco gas pipeline project.

“Given the domestic consumption in the west of the country and gas supplies from there to Iran, we will have 40 billion cubic meters of gas annually for export, so that European countries do not have to worry,” Turkmenistan’s Deputy PM Baymurad Khodzhamukhamedov said at the Oil and Gas Turkmenistan-2010 Forum in Ashgabat. Read the rest of this entry »