On January 29, the National Statistics Office (NSO) of Georgia released new economic data, which shows that in 2015, the country’s GDP grew by just 2.8 percent, significantly less than its 4.6 percent growth from 2014 (Geostat.ge, January 29). In fact, for a lower middle... MORE

Following the devaluation of Azerbaijan’s national currency, the manat, in December 2015—the second in a year—the public has struggled to understand how this policy will affect their daily lives. The impact has become clearer during the first month of 2016: salaries have dropped dramatically, and... MORE

As oil prices have gone down significantly, the consequences may go well beyond the depreciation of the Russian ruble and Russia’s economic decline. Armenian Deputy Minister of Finance, Pavel Safaryan, recently stated that some of loans previously promised by Russia, including the $270 million loan... MORE

Low oil and commodity prices have crippled the Russian economy, caused a massive devaluation of the ruble and a contraction of government budget expenditures. At a conference of the All-Russian Peoples Front (VNF—Vserossiysky Narodni Front—a pro-Kremlin populist organization) in Stavropol in the North Caucasus this... MORE

On January 19, President Vladimir Putin met with the governor of Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Rashid Temrezov, in Moscow. Temrezov reported that the republic reduced its dependence on the Russian federal budget in 2015, and that tax collection rates and the republican economy overall were better last year... MORE

On January 20, the official website of Kazakhstan’s presidency published Nursultan Nazarbayev’s address to the nation in which he announced snap parliamentary elections. Earlier, on January 13, the lower chamber of parliament, the Mazhilis, had made public a collective appeal to the head of state... MORE

Azerbaijan, the third largest oil producer in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) after Russia and Kazakhstan, shifted to a floating exchange rate regime on December 21, 2015, triggered by a rapid fall in oil prices. For the long term Azerbaijan had almost a constant... MORE

Moscow is openly unhappy with the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, which came into effect starting on January 1, 2016. Consequently, Russia has slapped an embargo on Ukrainian food and complicated the transit of Ukrainian goods... MORE

With the global oil price dropping to below $40 per barrel and the tenge showing the worst performance among the world’s currencies in a year (Nur.kz, December 19, 2015), Kazakhstan is hastily adjusting to the dramatic change in market conditions by returning to more liberal... MORE

This Monday (January 11), Russia begins its traditionally delayed entry into the new year without any breaking geopolitical news but with an unusually dark economic outlook. Throughout the whole, lengthy, Russian festive season, there were no reports of airstrikes in Syria but plenty of news... MORE