TASHKENT, NUR-SULTAN (TCA) — Uzbekistan closed its borders on March 23 and announced it will effectively lock down its capital, Tashkent, from March 24 to slow the spread of the coronavirus in Central Asia’s most populous country, RFE/RL reported.
Uzbekistan has at least 46 confirmed coronavirus cases, all but one in Tashkent, a city of more than 2.5 million.
The government has already shut down public transit in the capital and ordered most businesses to switch to remote working. It also closed borders as of midnight, allowing only foreign nationals to leave.
In neighboring Kazakhstan, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered state-owned companies on March 23 to start selling part of their foreign currency revenue on the domestic market.
The measure is meant to support the local tenge currency, which has continued to weaken sharply amid the coronavirus outbreak and the drastic global drop in the price of oil, the country's main export.
In a meeting with his cabinet, Tokayev also ordered state-owned companies to start converting their foreign-currency deposits into tenge and pay out up to 100 percent of last year's profits in dividends.
The president also ordered a freeze on bank loan repayments by individuals and small- and medium-sized businesses for the duration of the state of emergency caused by the coronavirus outbreak, which is set to last until at least mid-April but may be extended.
Kazakhstan currently has 66 confirmed coronavirus cases.
Source: TCA
Comments
Post Comment