Mongolia’s aggregate industrial output and external trade turnover have increased remarkably over the first 10 months of 2010, official statistics show.
From January through October, the total industrial output increased by 177.2 bln.tog or 13.2 percent to 1.517.4 bln.tog compared to the same period the previous year.
French Alstom together with Kazakh Railways Temir Zholy (KTZ) and Russian Transmashholding (TMH) set up a joint venture that will supply 295 electric locomotives to the Kazakh railway company.
Earlier this year, the memorandum of cooperation was signed in Almaty. Kazakh Railways confirmed their electric locomotive order for a total of €1.3 billion. Alstom evaluates its share of the contract at approximately €800 million. The contract will take effect March 11, 2011.
Estonia’s Parliament will accept a bill allowing the separation of AS Eesti Gaas’s natural gas sales and transmission divisions in two years to reduce dependence on Russia’s Gazprom.
A draft bill requiring Eesti Gaas AS, an Estonian natural gas company which imports and sells natural gas, to split the ownership of sales and networks by Jan. 1, 2013 is “90 percent ready,” said Igor Grazin, a lawmaker with Prime Minister Andrus Ansip’s Reform Party, in a interview with Bloomberg.
Reuters is reporting that Russia and Poland have agreed a new gas supply deal conforming to EU rules.
The deal should ease worries that Europe, which takes gas through the Polish pipeline, will face shortages during the coming winter.
Russia and Poland agreed on to increase gas delivery to Poland and its transit to Germany through the Yamal pipeline last year but was not signed due to worries that it was incompatible with European Union laws.
Russian energy giant Gazprom has confirmed intentions on acquiring control over Belarusian gas pipeline operator, Beltransgaz.
Andrei Kruglov, Gazprom’s deputy CEO, discussed his company’s interest in boosting its stake in the company. This comes a few years after the company purchased 50 percent of Beltrangaz’s shares in 2007 indicating Gazproms’s intention to increase their control over the Belarusian pipeline.
Beginning this year, Russia is altering a prison system that dates back of 70 years to the time of Stalin, separating for the first time career criminals from the general prison population.
As the New York Times reports, currently, “the inmates are divided into barracks housing a hundred or so men without regard to the severity of their crimes. At night, a guard locks the door and walks away, leaving first-time offenders and people convicted of nonviolent crimes to fend for themselves in a crowd of gang members, hit men and other career criminals.”
By Edith Balazs
Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) — Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai said countries in central and eastern Europe should join together and create a “triangle” of supply points for natural gas to reduce dependence on fuel from Russia.
“I’m proposing that countries in the region set up a gas supply triangle to boost the diversity and security,” Bajnai said at an energy summit in Budapest today, which was attended by heads of government from countries in the region. “We need to increase the number of independent suppliers.”
McDonald’s opened its first outlet in Russia 20 years ago this past Sunday, on January 31, 1990, while thousands of Moscoviets braved the cold in Pushkin Square.
To celebrate the milestone, as well as a 23 percent year on year profit increase last quarter, McDonalds’ CEO Jim Skinner announced that they would be expanding their business in Russia by 45 outlets in 2010.
Demanding tax cuts and job creation, protests against Russia’s current administration were once again staged across the country over the weekend.
In Moscow yesterday, police detained as many as 100 protesters at an unauthorized anti-Kremlin demonstration in downtown Triumfalnaya Square.
Among those arrested were several prominent opposition leaders, including Eduard Limonov, leader of The Other Russia; Boris Newtsov, former Russian deputy prime minister; and Oleg Orlov, head of the Memorial human rights group.
In a controversial move, Russia’s state-run arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, said yesterday that there were no international agreements preventing the sale of arms to Iran.
This news comes as Russia continues to expand their role as one of the world’s largest arms manufacturers and exporters. That’s all nice, but what peeves some other players on the world stage (namely the U.S. and Israel) is their willingness to deal with so-called ‘pariah regimes.’ i.e. countries that the U.S. doesn’t have under their heel.
Russia lists China, India, Syria, Venezuela, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria among their foreign clientele. So, in short, business is booming.