Publication: BNE Business New Europe

Over the past year the coronavirus pandemic has tried our patience, as well as our health, Russia was hit with more economic sanctions and Moscow endured extreme weather conditions. One may be forgiven for thinking that Russians have endured the worst that nature and politics can throw at them and should now look forward to a quiet holiday month. Not quite. History has repeatedly shown that August is a month when surprises, usually bad, can happen more often than in any other month. It is very rare for August to pass without a legacy event, whether a major accident, environment disaster or political event.

For most of the past hundred years, Central Asia was little known to most of the rest of the world. It was closed to outsiders during the over seven decades of Russian occupation and, like most of the other former Soviet states, the countries in the region have often struggled to deal with political and economic freedom since independence. Some are still struggling to define their historic and current national identities while also trying to chart the best course for social and economic development. With few exceptions, the region has been of little interest to investors or multinational corporations. That is now starting to change.

A Mongolian mine is seeking a London listing via a reverse takeover of Arkle Resources, according to the Irish gold and zinc explorer founded by the serial entrepreneur John Teeling.

The Undur Tsakhir mine, located in Tayshir Soum in the Gobi-Altai province of Mongolia, and which is being explored by the Sod Gazar surveying company, produces the metal molybdenum, which is used for steel alloys.

Investors into Russian stocks, bonds and the ruble are holding their breath, waiting to see how bad the widely expected US sanctions on Russia will be. But the growing consensus is that the US sanctions will be light and merely symbolic.

What’s wrong with the Eurasia Economic Union (EEU), the economic block set up by Russia that is a copy of the EU and was supposed to promote stability and prosperity throughout the Eurasian landmass?

In Russia, it has become a late July tradition amongst Russia watchers to remind ourselves that August is the month when unusual and trend changing events take place more often than in any other month of the year. If one needs a reminder, it was twenty years ago, on August 9 1999, that Vladimir Putin was former president Boris Yeltsin’s surprise choice to be his prime minister. The rest, as the cliché goes, is history. What may we expect this year?

Moving beyond oil vulnerability. Russia’s oil minister, Alexander Novak, indicated in early October that he favoured extending the Opec-Russia production deal into late 2018 (from the expiry in March) because it was slowly restoring supply-demand equilibrium and needed some more time to be effective.