The European Union allocates €19.6 million to Kyrgyzstan to improve social protection, develop local income-generating initiatives and safety of uranium tailings; Kazakhstan and Russia to continue their cooperation over the Baikonur space station; Europea
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    • According to reports, the European Union has allocated €19.6 million to Kyrgyzstan to improve social protection, develop local income-generating initiatives and safety of uranium tailings.1

    Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry has said that cooperation with Russia over the Baikonur space station will continue in the future. Russia pays Kazakhstan $115 million a year for use of the facility, but is also working on a space launch station in its own territory. 2

    Reports noted that European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has provided a US$ 196.5 million loan to Kazakhstan for building a strategic road network that will connect the southern Kazakh city of Shymkent and the Uzbek border. For the last three thousand years, merchants from Europe to China travelled through Kazakhstan along the Silk Road. At present, Kazakhstan aims to modernize the same routes to improve regional integration. The reconstruction of the roads is part of Kazakhstan’s larger infrastructure project to build a Western Europe-Western China highway. 3

    Drugs control agencies of Kazakhstan and Russia have intercepted 663 pounds of narcotics in a joint international sting operation4 .

    Pakistan has pushed for more political and economic engagement with Central Asia. 5

    In other developments, reports noted that Central Asian economies have been ranked from “moderately free” to “repressed” in the 2013 Index of Economic Freedom published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, with none of them rising above 68th out of 185 economies. 6

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