Baku expects more gold output to be produced at deposits in the territories previously occupied by Armenian forces and spends millions of dollars for infrastructure projects in Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions.

Fitch said that Armenia's 'B+' IDRs reflected strong per-capita income, governance and business environment indicators relative to peers, as well as a robust macroeconomic and fiscal policy framework and credible commitment to reform that were underpinned by an IMF programme.

The sovereign loan will be used for the reconstruction of a 204 km road section between the cities of Kyzylorda and Zhezkazgan, as well as the construction of a 14.8 km bypass road around Kyzylorda, a city in south-central Kazakhstan.

The agreement was reached during recent talks between Kazakhstan's Prime Minister Askar Mamin and the EBRD President Odile Renault-Basso.

Uzbek-Swiss joint venture Samfruit, founded in 2002, owns a plant with an area of 10 hectares with its own greenhouses for growing seedlings in the Samarkand district of the Samarkand region, as well as the Samfrut-Organic farm with a total area of 234 hectares in the Nurabad district.