By Alexander Sodiqov (2/2/2011 issue of the CACI Analyst)

In January 2011, Tehran’s embassy in Dushanbe announced that an Iranian company will invest about US$ 300 million in building two cement plants in Tajikistan. When completed, the new coal-driven plants are expected to produce two million metric tons of cement a year. According to the embassy, Iran is now choosing from four sites with large limestone reserves, which have been proposed by the Tajik government, to decide where to build the plants.

By Georgiy Voloshin (2/2/2011 issue of the CACI Analyst)

The recent World Economic Forum in Davos, attended by more than 2,500 high-level decision-makers from all over the world, was the place where Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Karim Massimov promised that his country would double its daily oil output by 2020, thus reaching the level of 3 million barrels per day. A few months earlier, the Kazakh Minister of oil and gas, who had been traditionally invited to deliver a keynote speech at the Kazakhstan International Oil and Gas Exhibition (KIOGE) in Almaty, told the journalists that over 100 million tons of oil would be exported every year in ten years’ time. He also hinted at a possibility that such a trend might be sustained for at least four decades.

By Joldosh Osmonov (2/2/2011 issue of the CACI Analyst)

On January 11, the national commission investigating the causes of the inter-ethnic clashes between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in southern Kyrgyzstan presented its report to the Kyrgyz parliament. The long-awaited official results of the commission caused heated discussions for two full days in parliament.

The commission was formed by then Interim Government (IG) leader Roza Otunbaeva and consisted of government officials, human rights defenders, journalists, and other people well known to the public.