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.

Belarusian gold and foreign exchange reserves rose over the New Year to US$7.9 billion due in part to the US$2.5 billion paid by Russia’s Gazprom for control of pipeline operator Beltransgaz, Reuters reports.

The conditions of a Russia-led rescue loan stipulated that Belarus must sell state-owned assets in order to free up cash. Gas monopoly Gazprom said in November it would buy the 50 percent of Beltransgaz it did not already own for US$2.5 billion.

The country’s central bank National Bank of Belarus (NBB) said reserves had grown as a result of the sale to US$7.915 billion from US$7.355 billion in early December.

Last year, the severe financial crisis devalued the Belarusian ruble and sent inflation spiraling by more than 100 percent.

The monetary policy guidelines are aimed at limiting inflation, while the Belarusian ruble’s exchange rate is to be set by market forces with minimal intervention from the NBB.

The NBB promised that it would carry out only limited interventions for curbing drastic fluctuations of the ruble’s exchange rate.

Earlier, the NBB said gold and foreign exchange reserves are expected to total US$6.1 billion to US$7 billion at the end of 2012.

“Keeping the reserves at a level sufficient for the economic security of Belarus and ensuring timely settlement of foreign and domestic obligations in foreign currency in full are priority tasks of the government and the National Bank,” central bank official said to BelTA.

The NBB said that its base refinance rate would be reduced to 20-23 percent towards the end of 2012.

Negotiations on the post-Soviet republic’s WTO accession have been on-going for more than 14 years. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the country applied for membership in the WTO in April 1996 and circulated its Memorandum on the Foreign Trade Regime in 1996. Kazakhstan’s Working Party met for the first time in March 1997.

In June 2009, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus decided to try and join the WTO as a single customs territory. Several months later, however, they announced that they would abandon that strategy to again apply as individual countries. WTO officials had indicated that the collective-entry strategy could significantly delay the accession process.

Astana subsequently announced plans to enter the WTO by the end of 2010, but later had to scrap its plans. Earlier this year, Kazkahstan’s cabinet announced that accession into the WTO is one of its priorities for 2011.

In late May, 2011, Zhanar Aitzhanova, the country’s top WTO negotiator, who also serves as minister of economic development and trade said that Kazakhstan officials are now working on finalizing the technical details of its bid.

“While there are some remaining issues like agriculture subsidies and livestock sanitation regulations to be worked out, on major issues we don’t have problems,” she said at a news conference at the Kazakhstan Embassy in Washington.

The protocol on the completion of the bilateral negotiations between the United States and Kazakhstan on Astana’s accession to the WTO was signed on September 21 by the two countries’ governments in Washington.

The signing of the protocol was preceded by technical consultations on the issue of access of U.S. service providers to the Kazakh market. This was one of the key conditions for Kazakhstan’s accession to the WTO.

Of particular interest were the issues of supply of services for companies engaged in the production of oil and natural gas, telecommunications, construction, cross-border and financial services.

According to the minister of economic development and trade, “the reached agreements will create a more favorable climate and stimulate additional investment in the above-mentioned sectors of services, mainly in the processing and creation of new industries in Kazakhstan.” The United States is a key investor in Kazakhstan with foreign direct investment into the republic from 1993 to 2011 amounting to US$40 billion.

“We are considering two or three projects for an amount of up to 100 million euros (US$133 million) and are still considering whether this will be debt or equity,” said Riccardo Puliti, EBRD managing director and head of energy and natural resources.

Kazakhstan, which has tripled oil production in the last decade on its way to becoming Central Asia’s largest economy, is seeking investment to develop wind, solar and hydroelectric projects to reduce a power deficit in parts of the country’s regions.

High speed wind locations are in the southeast mountain passes leading to China, in the Alytau mountain regions in the center of the republic, and in the southwest on the Caspian seaboard.

Renewable energy projects are relatively rare in Kazakhstan, which sits on 3 percent of the world’s recoverable oil reserves. Coal-fired power plants currently accounted for 75 percent of the electricity generated in Kazakhstan, while gas accounted for a further 12 percent and hydroelectric power 9 percent, according to the Industry Ministry data.

But Kazakhstan’s vast steppe has potential for generating wind power, particularly in southern regions of the country that depend largely on electricity imported from nearby Uzbekistan or the distant coal seams of northern Kazakhstan. It also has a plentiful supply of hydro, solar, biomass, and geothermal energy.

Industry Minister Aset Isekeshev said Kazakhstan aimed by 2014 to be generating 1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, or slightly over 1 percent of total consumption, from renewable sources. This share should rise to 3 percent by 2020, he said.

Kazakhstan passed primary legislation in 2009 to stimulate investment in renewable energy sources and reduce the environmental impact of power generation.

Benefits of this law include priority land allocation for renewable energy sites and obligatory purchase by transmission companies of electricity generated from renewable sources.

The EBRD’s Puliti said the implementation of new wind farm projects would require the approval of secondary legislation that would define feed-in tariffs, the fee paid by the power distributor or transmission company to the wind farm.

This is likely to be higher than the average power tariff, in order to act as a stimulant for investment in wind power. “In the next six months, it should be approved,” he said.

Kazakhstan could have wind power generating capacity of 1,000 megawatts by 2014, said Andreas Thomas, senior vice-president for business development for Vestas Central Europe, a unit of the Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas Wind Systems.

“The pure wind potential in Kazakhstan is much, much higher because they have an enormous land mass,” Thomas told.

Since the beginning of its operations in Kazakhstan, the EBRD has invested over €2.8 billion in over 130 projects in various sectors of the Kazakh economy, mobilizing additional investments in excess of about €6 billion.

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.

Former Soviet Central Asian nation authorities suspect the current supplier, Gibraltar-registered Mina Corp., of links to the family of former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, overthrown last year — allegations it has denied. Mina’s contract as the sole supplier to the base expires in December, but it can bid to retain a piece of the business.

Fuel sales to the air base in this impoverished have been mired in controversy over lack of transparency. A Gibraltar-registered firm is currently the sole supplier of fuel, but that arrangement is terminating in December.

Manas Center provides logistical support for NATO in Afghanistan and is a major transit hub for U.S. troops flying in and out of the region. The company also supplies fuel to civilian aircraft at the international airport where the base is located.

The new supplier is Gazpromneft-Aero Kyrgyzstan, which is 51 percent owned by a subsidiary of Gazprom and 49 percent by Kyrgyzstan’s government.

U.S. Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Pamela Spratlen told journalists the two sides could sign another contract within 90 days of the initial shipment of fuel that would increase delivery to up to 50 percent of the base’s needs, the Reuters news agency said.

The arrangement could ease concerns about corruption involving fuel supplies to the Manas. The potential for significant revenue also could reduce Moscow’s incentive to seek closure of the U.S. base.

The U.S. Manas air base spends from US$300 million to US$400 million a year on aviation fuel.

“The money coming from fuel supplies to the [Manas] Transit Center will go into Kyrgyzstan’s state budget, and it will be hard to filch it,” Russian Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Valentin Vlasov said to the Associated Press.

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.

Berdymukhammedov predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, who enjoyed a bizarre personality cult during his 21-year rule until he died suddenly of a heart attack in December 2006, had routinely held show trials of top officials to demonstrate his attempts to root out corruption.

Foreign press repeatedly noticed that Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov also enjoys unrestricted authority in this Central Asian country.

Authorities may also be seeking to reassure foreign investors as a group of Turkish companies prepares to seek legal action against Turkmenistan in a bid to recover what they say is more than US$1 billion in unpaid bills for construction work in the former Soviet state, the Associated Press speculates.

“I held a responsible job, in which I embarked on a track of illegal enrichment. I extorted money from businessmen — worth a total of US$3.6 million,” television showed Byashim Begjanov, a former head of international operations at Turkmenistan’s central bank, telling the court.

“I repent for the grave crime I committed,” he said.

Begjanov and two other senior central bank officials were each sentenced to 15 years in jail, which is the maximum penalty in Turkmenistan for economic crimes.

The government has recently reduced maximum prison sentences for economic crimes down from 25 years as part of reforms aimed at liberalizing the justice system.

The gas-rich nation has made waffling efforts to diversify the country’s mostly energy-dependent economy, but many foreign companies remain wary of investing in what remains an opaquely regulated and corruption-riddled market.

Turkmenistan, which holds the world’s fourth-largest reserves of natural gas, is a small nation of approximately 5 million people. It is located in Central Asia and is bordered by the Caspian Sea to the west, Iran and Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the east, and Kazakhstan to the north.

Turkmenistan’s economy is based largely on natural resource extraction. Although the hydrocarbon sector performs well, according to the U.S. Fund for Peace, 58 percent of the population lives below the poverty level.

During the Soviet period, Turkmenistan was one of the poorest republics, and since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has continued to fall behind its Central Asian neighbors in most areas of development. Infant and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the other Central Asian states, while GDP is lower and economic development is slow in comparison to its neighbors.

Crude Accountability NGO, which focused on environmental justice for petroleum communities in the Caspian Sea region, has named Turkmenistan in its report as the “one of the world’s most closed and repressive countries.”

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.”

The festival will be organized by the efforts of Mongolian Association in Ujinbu.

Golomt and Khaan Banks, headhunted in Ulaanbaatar, together with Seoul Global Center and two Korean lenders Woori Bank and Shinhan Bank announced will sponsor the cultural event, infoMongolia.com reports.

South Korea is the largest labor market for Mongolians. Estimates suggest that 38,000 to 40,000 Mongolian’s currently live and work in Republic of Korea. The country now has more Mongolians than Japan, Europe and the US combined.

At the same time, compared to other Asian countries, Mongolia has a relatively small overseas diaspora.

The government of South Korea estimates that one out of every two urban households in Mongolia has a family member working in South Korea.

According to South Korean government figures, 40 percent are residing in the country illegally; other estimates of the proportion of illegal migrants run as high as 70 percent.

Most Mongolians in South Korea are migrant workers employed in heavy industry. Some also run small restaurants, trading companies, and grocery stores in Seoul.

Aside from migrant workers, Mongolians come to South Korea to pursue higher education –around 2000 Mongolians annually. Remittances from Mongolians working in South Korea have become an important source of income to this nation of 2.7 million.

Mongolian women also come to South Korea as the brides of men they met through international marriage agencies; their average age is just 24.9, whereas that of their husbands is 44.5, and many are more educated than their husbands, according to the figures of Asian Workers News.

Mongolia’s trade with South Korea has almost quadrupled over the last decade and the Asia’s fourth biggest economy is now the third largest trading partner of the resource rich country after China and Russia.

According to the Foreign Investment and Foreign Trade Agency of Mongolia, South Korea is the 4th largest investor in Mongolia with total FDI of over US$255 million since 1990.

South Korea is also a key donor who has provided approximately US$137 million since 1990 in committed loans and grants to Mongolia.

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.

The decline in FDI is officially attributed to the ongoing impact of the global recession; however, investors are also cautious due to the political climate and Russia’s military build-up in the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which slashed foreign investment.

Kobalia said recent improvements in the country’s sovereign ratings outlook should help restore investors’ confidence. Ratings agencies Standard & Poor’s and Fitch both raised their outlook for Georgia to “positive” in March.

Georgia placed a US$500 million 10-year Eurobond last month with a coupon rate of 6.79 percent and tendered to buy back US$416.7 million worth of its outstanding US$500 million 2013 Eurobond via an “any and all” tender ahead of a new issue.

The International Monetary Fund, which forecasts economic growth of 5.5 percent in Georgia this year versus 6.4 percent in 2010, has said the Eurobond issue should help spur greater FDI.

Kobalia highlighted tourism and hydroelectric power among the most attractive sectors for foreign investors. She said Georgia was using only 18 percent of the hydropower that it generates and was exporting the rest to neighboring countries.

“Turkey, our neighbor, has a deficit already so it’s a great investment for companies to build hydropower plants and to transfer electricity to Turkey,” she said.

Georgia was also offering investors a 15-year tax break on investments in two tourism sites in the Black Sea, she said.

Earlier this March, American real estate mogul Donald Trump announced his plan to invest US$250 million in the construction of two 40-storey skyscrapers in the country — the Trump Tower in the capital Tbilisi and the residential Trump Riviera, in the resort town of Batumi.

Meanwhile, Georgian media reports that remittances from migrants back to Georgia now exceed FDI flows. This can be seeing as a troubling fact for the government and for President Mikhail Saakashvili’s high-profile campaign to attract outside investment, Menas Associates Blog speculates.

Annual inflation hit 13.7 percent in February, continuing a trend of rapidly rising prices: year-on-year inflation has climbed almost 1 percent every month since October, and has soared since June 2010 figure of 3.7 percent.

Most concerning for Georgian politicians are the fact that food and soft beverages is the biggest contributor to inflation, making up almost all of the 2.8 percent jump from January’s figures. Taken alone, inflation on these products is running at 28.4 percent. The social and political impact of such a sharp rise in food prices is potentially very serious indeed.

The government responded by distributing one-off food vouchers of around US$17 to poor households. Although these might be effective at alleviating immediate concerns, economists have warned that in the long term these could distort the economy and actually contribute to galloping inflation.

Some observers are skeptical of FDI flows doubling this year, saying that Donald Trump’s expansion into Georgia may not be enough to start a new wave of foreign investment.

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.

“Using the Russia route, Mongolia will have better access to a global market rather than just dealing with China,” Chris Weafer, Moscow-based chief strategist at UralSib Financial Corp. said to the Bloomberg. “You need that to maximize the commercial value of its goods. Otherwise China dictates prices.”

The massive infrastructure investment stems from the Mongolian government’s desire to diversify trade and reduce dependence on China.

“The missing link in the Mongolian gold rush now is transportation infrastructure,” said Roland Nash, who helps manage about US$150 million of Russian stocks at Moscow-based hedge fund Verno Investment Management Ltd.

“The key for the Mongolians is to attract investments from as many different countries as possible to lessen their dependence on China.”

When the Dalai Lama visited Mongolia in 2002, China expressed its displeasure by closing the border.

“Who knows, they could do that any time,” Dashbaljir Nemekhbayar, head of the Transportation Ministry’s Finance and Investment Department, told EurasiaNet.

In addition to the desire to build up its own industrial capacity, Mongolia finds Russia to be a more comfortable partner to work with than China, said Alicia Campi, president of the U.S.-Mongolia Advisory Group.

“The Russians, partners since 1949 in Mongolia’s north-south border-to-border sole railway, are a known, basically reliable commodity to Mongolian policymakers and they share Mongolian concern over rapidly increasing Chinese penetration and monopolization of north Asian economic trade,” Campi continued.

The rail improvements could also help Mongolia capitalize on new rare earth taxes and regulations instituted in recent years by China, the world’s dominant rare element producer.

“Modernization of the country’s transportation infrastructure will make Mongolian mining ventures even more attractive to foreign investors,” John Shearer, president and CEO of GTSO, which is currently working to secure the mining rights to four mineral-rich properties in Mongolia, said to the Business Wire.

Mongolia this year is to start building a link from the Tavan Tolgoi coal basin with an existing rail line north to Russia.

“Tavan Tolgoi is ready to invest US$1.5 billion into 1000-kilometer railway line connecting Tavan Tolgoi to Choibalsan via Sainshand industrial complex,” Kh. Battulga, Minister for Road, Transportation Construction and Urban Development said on April 21 to business-mongolia.com. Mongolian Choibalsan city is already connected to the Russian rail network.

US$10 billion industrial complex in southern city of Sainshand to include a copper smelter, oil refinery, power plants and chemical coking facilities to process the output from both the coal and copper-gold mines.

Feasibility study of the rail-line project is expected to be completed in July 2011, according to the Tavan Tolgoi web site.

While the government has said the railroad will be constructed within two years, some experts said it is more likely to take three to four years.

According to the International Monetary Fund, economic growth may surge to 23 percent in 2013, more than twice the forecast expansion in China, as large mining projects begin production.

Mongolia’s benchmark MSE Top 20 Index is the world’s best performer in the past 12 months and its currency, the tugrik, the fifth-biggest gainer against the dollar.

Agriculture and mining each account for about 20 percent of gross domestic product. Aside from coal and copper, the country also holds oil, potash, iron ore and uranium, as well as rare earths used in electronics, wind turbines and smart bombs.

World Bank data says Mongolian rail network comprises 1,815 kilometers of broad gauge track, of which 1,110 kilometers are on the main line linking Russia to China, 238 kilometers are on a separate network in Eastern Mongolia that has its own link to the Russian railway, and the remaining 477 kilometers are branches from the main line.