Last year saw a number of significant developments in China-Kazakhstan relations, including two official visits to China by Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, multi-billion dollar contracts, the promotion of transport and infrastructure initiatives, and an unprecedented 30 per cent growth in bilateral trade. Kazakhstan accounts for half of China’s trade and investment in the region, with trade turnover between Kazakhstan and China reaching an impressive $31 billion. By 2023, the volume of cargo between the two countries will have increased by 22 per cent to nearly 30 million tonnes…

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Pakistan reached a staff-level agreement in March 2024 for the release of the remaining $1.1 billion out of the total $3 billion bailout package. The 9-month bailout package was sought by the Pakistani government last year to avert the sovereign debt. The country has been dependent on IMF loans for decades to fuel its staggering economy. This was Pakistan’s 24^th engagement with the Washington-based lender…

In mid-2023, as part of its preparation of the country’s 2024 budget, Mongolia’s Ministry of Finance prepared a number of documents containing assessments of national economic development prospects for the next three years.  These documents, which are available on Mongolia’s impressively comprehensive official database, allow observers to assess the Mongolian government’s views on their country’s development potential…

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s week-long visit to China, the second in less than a year, which began on 3 April, represents a remarkable development in relations between the world’s two leading powers. Among other things, it is noteworthy because it came almost immediately after the telephone conversation between the two leaders, which was the first contact between them since they met in San Francisco on the sidelines of the next APEC summit in November 2023. In the six months since then, the long process of accumulation of various kinds of negativity in the bilateral relationship has continued…

Many worldwide have been waiting for the other foot to fall on the conflict in Ukraine. Finally, good old Germans are the ones to plop down the telling jackboot. Making money off the blood-soaked ground of Europe’s most corrupt and (now) pitiful country is what it’s all about. Germany now proposes to open the gate for private investment funds to make debtors out of a crippled nation. And the Russians are the bad guys?…

The Red Sea holds immense significance in international maritime trade. Two choke points, the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandab, hold critical value in this sea route. Around 22 percent of global maritime container trade passed through the Suez Canal in 2023. Bab-el-Mandeb strait is used to access this Canal by ships traveling from Europe. The Red Sea hosts almost 12 percent of global trade, 21344 vessels per day, amounting to $1 trillion in goods, and 10 percent of maritime trade…

Two weeks after the meeting of the Chinese parliament, commonly referred to as the “Two Sessions”, held in the first half of March this year, two equally noteworthy forum events were held in Beijing and immediately afterwards in the resort town of Boao (on Hainan Island), attended by Chinese and foreign experts. The main theme of the latter was the implementation of a fundamentally innovative trend in the country’s economic policy, the main provisions of which had been outlined by the Chinese…

According to the Statistical Service of Kazakhstan, the total volume of goods transported by rail between Kazakhstan and China reached 23 million tons as early as 2022 and grew by a record 22 percent last year. In view of this high volume of freight traffic and the clear upward trend, the Kazakh authorities are having to invest heavily in the development of new railroads in order to serve the growing freight volumes and enable the rapid and efficient delivery of goods through the country…

The Scottish aristocrat and British Prime Minister (1963-1964) Sir Alec Douglas-Hume once said: “There are two problems in my life. The political problems are insoluble and the economic problems are incomprehensible.” His words also reflect very closely the economic realities of modern Turkey. Recep Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002 amid an economic crisis and widespread criticism of the economic policies of the previous government, led by Bülent Ejavit, which had seen the country’s GDP fall by 10 percent…

On 22-23 January 2024, Turkmen Foreign Minister R. Meredow visited Japan. During this trip, meetings were held with the Japanese Foreign Minister, the Ministers of Digital Transformation; Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism; Economy, Trade and Industry; representatives of Japanese business, the Director of the Foreign Trade Organisation of Japan and the Head of the Export Credit Organisation of Japan. The leitmotif of the talks was the cooperation…

You’ll find an important Russia-India story on page 28 of the Google News results, to care about what’s really happening between the two BRICS nations. Many reading this may not know that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Vladimir Putin on his re-election as the President of the Russian Federation and announced the deepening of a strategic partnership between the two countries. Russia and India – strategic partners – isn’t that page one New York Times stuff? Well, no…

Mongolia adopted its 2024 budget law on October 1, 2023. As part of the preparations for the budget law, an extensive preparatory review of the 2023 figures was performed. These were correlated with the spending plans for 2024, 2025 and 2026, and the results were summarized in a special report published by Mongolia’s Ministry of Finance. The report is primarily a breakdown of Mongolia’s draft budget for 2024. As for the budget itself, the following points made in the report are worthy of note…