Russia allows gas flows to Gazprom Marketing & Trading for 90 days
Al-Arabiya: Russia allows gas flows to Gazprom Marketing & Trading for 90 days
Russia gave permission for natural gas supplies to Gazprom Marketing & Trading Singapore Ltd, part of Gazprom Germania, from Yamal LNG project for 90 days, a government decree showed on Wednesday.
The move comes less than two weeks after the Kremlin said that Russian sanctions imposed on state gas company Gazprom’s former German unit and other entities meant they could not receive gas supplies from Russia.
Germany, Russia’s top client in Europe, in early April transferred Gazprom Germania, an energy trading, storage and transmission business ditched by Russia’s Gazprom, to its energy regulator to ensure energy security.
++++++++++++++++
Kazakhstan Keeps Its Options Open, but Not Too Open
Moscow isn’t all that worried about a fundamental policy reorientation from its neighbor.
-??????May 25, 2022
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed the world just how far Moscow would go to protect its interests. And as the war rages on, many wonder whether other important points along Russia’s periphery, including Georgia, Belarus or the South Caucasus, might be next. Perhaps nowhere is more concerning than Central Asia, which separates Russia from China and Iran and insulates it from the instability emanating from Afghanistan. These countries are awash in natural resources for Russia to exploit, lie along important trade routes to the Middle East and Europe, and are a reliable source of labor for Russian jobs.
Kazakhstan is Central Asia’s most pivotal country. It boasts the region’s most developed and largest economy, one that is already tightly integrated with Russia’s through the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Eurasian Economic Union. It has a single customs space with Russia, is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and in general is more dependent on Russia as a trading and investment partner than other countries. Kazakhstan shares the longest land border with Russia and thus hosts a large minority of ethnic Russians, who constitute nearly 20 percent of the population.
For these reasons, Kazakhstan has historically been considered a reliable Russian partner. But lately that hasn’t been the case. The government in Nur-Sultan has come out ambiguously at best on issues on which the Kremlin expected some kind of support if not outright unity. For example, Kazakhstan declared its neutrality on the Ukraine war and has permitted protests in support of Ukraine. It has begun to consider the trans-Caspian transport route, which bypasses Russia, for goods from China to Europe. Government officials are holding economic talks with Western representatives and engaging in dialogue with U.S. forces that promise protection from anti-Russia sanctions (even as Kazakhstan said it would not help Moscow bypass those same sanctions for fear of running afoul of them).
This raises an important question: Is this just short-term insurance, or is Kazakhstan shifting away from Russia?
Half-Pivot
Notably, the pivot from Russia started long before the invasion of Ukraine. Kazakhstan has prioritized neutrality and a multifaceted foreign policy ever since it gained its independence from the Soviet Union, even if it, like all former Soviet satellites, had existing economic, political and cultural ties it couldn’t afford to cut. But for the past few decades, Kazakhstan has made significant progress in rebuilding its economy, accelerating its gross domestic product growth, and diversifying trade and economic ties with partners around the world, including by joining organizations such as the World Trade Organization. It is also straying from the political culture of its founding – Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was until recently the only president the country had ever had, was very much a product of the Soviet system and exercised top-down control of the state – in a way that fosters independence and emphasizes national identity.
Kazakhstan’s economy is still closely integrated with Russia’s, of course, so Moscow still sees it as an unstable, dependent entity. But few others share this view. Most countries see Kazakhstan as an independent player and participant in international trade, a dynamically developing country with substantial natural resources that nonetheless remains in Russia’s sphere of influence. But with the Russian economy in disarray, countries now see Kazakhstan as something that could be pried away from Russia’s clutches.
Russian sanctions also help Kazakhstan in this regard. The COVID-19 pandemic contracted the Kazakh economy, which is looking for ways to maintain stability, goose economic growth and limit its exposure to Russia. To that end, Kazakh companies that previously shipped goods to Europe via Russia are seeking alternative corridors such as the aforementioned trans-Caspian trade route. And?the attention to Kazakhstan paid by other countries, especially those in the West that are rich enough to help Kazakhstan diversify, is also putting pressure on Russia.
Weighing Options
While it’s true that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made Kazakhstan especially nervous – given its sizeable Russian population and the punitive risks of trading with Russia – there are plenty of reasons for Nur-Sultan to want to keep Moscow close, at least in the short term.
On security matters, it still needs good ties with its much stronger neighbor. Despite its relative economic success, Kazakhstan has long been a politically unstable country. The?unrest in January, for example, was kept at bay largely thanks to the pro-Russia CSTO. More, it shares a border with much more unstable countries whose volatility could spread into Kazakhstan, and it shares a massive border with Russia. Unlike in Ukraine, NATO has no real presence nearby and would have a harder time supporting Kazakhstan and reacting to trouble there.
Economically, Kazakhstan is much more dependent on Russian trade and investment than Ukraine is, and relies on it for goods such as cheap grain. This is thanks to its geographic proximity and to its membership in the Eurasian Economic Union, which it is in no hurry to leave. And although Kazakhstan is trying to reduce its dependence on Russian trade, it’s not especially interested in going all-in with a country like China that could be its main buyer of raw materials and could thus dictate prices. Countries farther afield are simply a safer bet.
However, geography and distance are in some cases obstacles to overcome, ones that are exacerbated by Kazakhstan’s inability to manage transportation processes. Here is where Russia has the advantage. Not only does Russia border Kazakhstan, but the EAEU is the main route for the export of Kazakh goods, especially oil, through railways and oil pipelines in Russian territory that connect Kazakhstan with the Black Sea and the European Union. Diversification isn’t just a matter of money; the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the fact that Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan all use their own standards, make it difficult to conduct trade in Central Asia.
Demographically, ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan usually don’t consider themselves Kazakh. And with more Russians fleeing Russia, the enclaves of Russian expatriates are only likely to grow. Indeed, former Soviet satellites are considered good places for many Russians to live because of their linguistic and cultural similarities, with Kazakhstan becoming one of the most popular destinations for those who work with foreign companies. Russians bring with them skills and services and, as important, demand for local Kazakh goods and services.
From Moscow’s perspective, Kazakhstan’s recent behavior isn’t the threat Ukraine’s was simply because economic diversification doesn’t necessarily mean it is moving closer to the West. All the meetings in the world don’t change the fact that funding and investment opportunities from the U.S. and EU are limited; there are other profitable candidates, and neither is too keen to restore transportation infrastructure in a place where Russia is still active and influential. Instead, Kazakhstan is eager to establish closer ties with China, Turkey and Iran and to expand further into the Asian market, which could actually benefit Moscow if Kazakhstan is a neutral transit hub with good relations with most world powers. Even so, Russia understands it needs to keep the Kazakh economy humming so that it doesn’t have an unstable government on its border. But it also knows that it simply cannot provide for Kazakhstan right now, so Russia is open to short-term diversification.
Officials in Kazakhstan are weighing their options, but ultimately they realize they can’t rebuke Russia entirely. Its recent behavior is merely a short-term tactic meant to keep the economy on point. Kazakhstan will continue to try to be a friend to whomever it can, however cautiously.
++++++++++++++++++++
The Guardian. Pete Buttigieg calls for new Marshall plan to rebuild Ukraine
?Exclusive: Transportation secretary says there is global support for reconstruction effort to help recovery from Russian invasion
A leading figure in the Biden administration has backed a recovery programme for?Ukraine?in the style of the Marshall plan, which helped rebuild Europe after the second world war.
Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary, said there was plenty of political will at home and internationally towards cooperating in long-term reconstruction efforts including to buttress existing infrastructure in Ukraine.
“With the memory of the Marshall plan in mind, what we’re talking about is not only about how we fund immediate needs and support their ability to maintain the war effort, but how we support the ability of Ukraine to be economically viable and generate a sustainable future for themselves, even as they’re under attack,” the former presidential candidate said in an interview with the Guardian.
Buttigieg admitted that while “the destruction of Ukrainian homes and infrastructure is still under way”, to talk about reconstruction might feel premature “and yet in my encounters with Ukrainian leaders, and particularly my counterpart [Oleksandr Kubrakov], who I speak to regularly, they are already thinking about reconstruction even as they’re thinking about defending their homeland and it’s inspiring to see and it deserves strong and unified support from us.”
He said a “major topic of conversation” among transport ministers at the world meeting in Leipzig this week for the International Transport Forum was how they could help to get grain and other produce out of Ukraine, which is stuck because of blocked and destroyed ports and railway lines and is threatening to create a global food shortage.
领英推荐
“This is not only something that concerns us, as friends to Ukraine, but also concerns us because the world needs that production, especially on the agricultural side,” he said.
“Without access to the Black Sea, it’s always going to be a major disadvantage. We’re committed to helping there in any way we can.
“But I really admire in my Ukrainian counterparts that they’re thinking about the short and the long term at the same time – how to shore up infrastructure in the immediate term – the heroic work by the railway workers to restore connections so that goods can be moved from west to east and people from east to west.
“But they’re also thinking about very long-term questions and recognising that what they rebuild towards will not simply be a reconstruction of the Soviet-era infrastructure that this generation of Ukrainians has inherited.”
Buttigieg was speaking on the sidelines of an event hosted by the German Marshall Fund NGO in Berlin to mark the 75th anniversary of the Marshall plan, a multibillion-dollar recovery programme initiated by the US in 1947 that provided humanitarian and economic assistance to millions of Europeans to ease their recovery after the second world war.
The plan was named after George Marshall, the man who was then US secretary of state.
Buttigieg, who is in charge of implementing and overseeing a large swathe of projects in the US enabled under the $1tn (￡800bn) infrastructure bill that passed six months ago, stressed the relevance to the US as well as Ukraine of Marshall’s insistence about the need to create a “virtuous circle” between the economic security of a nation and its political stability based on its capacity to deliver.
He said that decades of disinvestment in the US had turned the virtuous cycle into a vicious one, with political institutions that lacked the resources to deliver well losing their legitimacy, leading to an erosion of trust, “which has given credence to those who would undermine those institutions, further diminishing their capacity to deliver”, he said.
The infrastructure fund was intended to break that cycle, he added. “If we can deliver as we’re setting out to do … then citizens will see what it means for them. We’ve got all kinds of things that have scrambled up our political and social life right now, including the information environment, the forms of extremism … and shocks like the pandemic, and economic reverberations from the war in Europe. It’s all the more reason for us to focus on delivering for people.”
He said that the stakes included not just comfort and convenience, but “perhaps also the credibility of governance itself”.
“In the 1930s, another season when democracy was in doubt, and when it had become fashionable in some circles in Washington to point approvingly to the rise in dictators, some would say by way of praise for fascism that Mussolini makes the trains run on time.
“This turns out to not be particularly true, by the way … but how revealing it is that this excuse for autocrats comes on the basis of their supposed prowess in providing transportation.”
Regarding Ukraine, Buttigieg said he was interested in President Volodymr Zelenskiy’s calls for reconstruction on a cities and regional level, under a plan apparently gaining traction, by which cities and communities across the world would adopt similar communities in Ukraine to their own ones.
“Understanding the needs and different capacities of different parts of the country is going to be very important,” Buttigieg said.
Asked if his government’s legitimacy over helping to rebuild a country was to be trusted after its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Buttigieg, who served in the country as an officer in the US Navy Reserve, said:
“Part of what we were up against in Afghanistan is just how fundamentally different the society, the values, the governance culture and the economics of that country are … it’s very different in Ukraine … one of the things that unites us to Ukraine are some of those core values around democracy.
“It’s so early to know what will be at the end of this upheaval. What we know is that the kind of united approach we have that reflects shared values among our partners and with Ukrainians is a very powerful one and will be an important basis of the relationship.
“Not just in getting us through this war, whatever the endgame looks like, but in a reconstruction that really does hold the promise of leading to new and innovative things.”
He praised the leadership he said Germany had shown since the start of the invasion, contrasting with the criticism the government of Olaf Scholz has received.
“I think it’s understood in Washington that the new steps that Germany has taken are major steps in security and energy policy … none of us knows what lies on the other side of this?Zeitenwende,”?he said, adopting the phrase used by Scholz meaning “turning point”, “but all of us should recognise that the only way for it to lead to a good place is for us to find our way to it together.”
Earlier on Thursday, Buttigieg took a tour of Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof or central station, a symbol of German unification, and met a group of Germans and US citizens of Ukrainian origin working as volunteers to receive refugees, about 2,000 of whom are arriving on trains from Ukraine each day.
“Just make sure you help us by keeping the narrative alive back home,” one of the volunteers, Natalia, from Minnesota and of Ukrainian descent, told him as Buttigieg thanked the women for their work.
Buttigieg, who ran for the US presidency in 2020 but withdrew in favour of supporting Joe Biden, would not be drawn on whether he had plans to run again in 2024.
“Right now my ambitions are to be the best secretary of transportation that I can,” he said. “I think there’s never been a better time to have this job.”
+++++++++++++++++
World Bank: Africa in the New Trade Environment- Market Access in Troubled Times
Sub-Saharan Africa represents only a small share of global production and trade while hosting half of the extreme poor worldwide.
To catch up with the rest of the world, the continent has no alternative: it must undertake reforms to scale up its supply capacity while better linking its production and trade to the global economy.
If it does so, it stands to gain from unlimited demand and innovation along the supply chain. Some progress has been made over the past decade, with the region’s exports and imports growing rapidly. Because most African economies rely heavily on trade for a large share of national income, they will also be more vulnerable to the trade disruptions of external shocks, as illustrated by the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
Africa in the New Trade Environment: Market Access in Troubled Times provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art analysis by a team of renowned trade economists who present a strategy to bolster Sub-Saharan Africa’s market access in the current global environment.
Citation
“Coulibaly, Souleymane; Kassa, Woubet; Zeufack, Albert G.. 2022.?Africa in the New Trade Environment : Market Access in Troubled Times. Washington, DC: World Bank. ? World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/36884 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
The End++++++++++++++++