Kundrati

[jebjab]

Kundrati Observer
September 2, 5291

"The last 5 years of the Tsankov administration's development dreams: progress, adjustment, and reckoning to be expected over the second half of the project"

Prime Minister Tsankov was, by all accounts, taking a break from his traditional antics, focusing on quietly governing out of Kasaema. His tours of southern Kundrati had been relatively successful, and the construction projects in the south were going well. Remember The Observer’s articles on investment projects over the last 4 years?

Here’s where they are today:

Leuansk International Airport

One of the first major projects announced by the administration was a $53,000,000 renovation and airport safety project focused on Terminal B of Leuansk International Airport. Outside of the airport, a further $143,000,000 was allocated to various projects in the city. The aging highway system received much of this money, supplemented by a further $474,000,000 grant toward the Kaesama-Leuansk-Aethansk Connection Initiative, a joint highway-railway project designed to further connect the three cities, known colloquially as the Three Pillars by the region’s population.

The ‘Three Pillars’ Project is still ongoing, with repaving and relaying of roads and rails, respectively, successfully adding to the freight and passenger transport capacity of the three cities, and most importantly connecting the industrial capacity of the region with the northern and southern ports of Kundrati.

The renovation of the Leuansk International Airport was completed in late 5290, as Prime Mininster Tsankov revisited his hometown and the location of his first announcement to cut the red ribbon on the newly-renovated terminal, and board his plane taking off toward the capital. Public reception of the project was generally positive, with a notably more comfortable experience in the terminal, a safer arrival and departure for pilots, a more streamlined airport security process, and its nomination in 5291 for Kundrati’s Best Airport, threatening to unseat Kasaema International Airport, consistently voted for the last decade as the best airport in Kundrati.

Southern Pilgon

Southern Pilgon was an area once known for being relatively underdeveloped compared to its neighbors, but its recent investment has given it the appearance of a favorite child of the Tsankov administration. The Southern Pilgon Infrastructure Initiative, an opening of nearly $1,000,000,000 of investment throughout the region in grants, loans, and direct assistance, has funded several important projects and is still being heavily utilized 4 years after its creation. Southern Pilgon had a history as a backwater, in part due to its near complete distruction in the Kundrati civil war, and is still economically and socially underdeveloped, but has seen drastic improvement, with a general improvement across government metrics.

Projects in Southern Pilgon include:

A multi-million LOD renovation of the railway depot in the outskirts of Aethansk, touted as an important connection between the capital and the relatively developed north of Kundrati and the high-growth regions of southern Kundrati, to cities such as Keita and Galensk, and to the island of Extea, constantly in need of resources from the mainland for its growing dockyard and industrial production.

Urban renewal efforts in Aethansk to combat years of urban decay, removing decades-old low income housing developments with documented safety and environmental issues in the city center, to be replaced with new housing and commercial developments already contracted to Aethansk-based architecture and construction firms. With this has come millions in educational investments, improvements to the water and electricity supply, and grants to ensure widespread internet access.

Renovation efforts to repair damaged infrastructure across the region are ongoing. Beyond the initial grants allocated to projects in the region, the Tsankov government has successfully renegotiated government contracts worth $319,000,000 for the complete overhaul of abandoned, damaged, hazardous, or otherwise undermaintained public services in the region, primarily transportation infrastructure, but with significant investments into other sectors, both directly and indirectly, coming as a result of the project.

Celania

Northern and Southern Celania are two very different places, both in appearance and in spirit. Northern Celania was once ravaged by war, caught in the crossfire of a brutal conflict that led to thousands leaving the city of Venora. They remained underdeveloped and stayed outside of the focus of previous governments until the Tsankov government once again cast light on the troubled region. Southern Celania came out relatively unscathed, having faced a relative lack of damage and upheaval during the civil war. To this day, the differences between the two halves of the state remain prevalent, with significantly higher unemployment, lower wages, and generally unfavorable quality of life in the north compared to the south of the state.

Here, however, both would see the state’s coffers once again open; in the north to revitalization projects and in the south to projects intended at boosting the region into an economic and political powerhouse of the nation of Kundrati as a whole. With much investment, both public and private, invested into the region over the last half a decade, projects have come and gone in both regions, with successful and unsuccessful endeavors. Generally, both regions have seen a stable boost in growth meeting initial government predictions in the region. While not as much of an undisputed success as the more limited projects in Pilgon and Extea, the broad scale of investment promised higher employment and a period of adjustment, as the state and individual locales reckoned with how they should proceed with the newfound hope and means to succeed that they were given.

Over the last year, investment stabilized and growth became more consistent in the region. Many successful projects shone through as examples of the general success of the Celanian project, including investments into shipping facilities 250km south of Jildrath, currently in the process of lobbying the central government for further funding, and the tremendous success that was the railway improvements in southern Celania, starting in Galensk and reaching throughout the region, promising continued growth in export and import-based sectors in the region, continuing to shun the service sectors that the government tacitly acknowledged as limiters of growth in a middle-income economy.

[hyraemous]

[2 January 5292]

Foreign Ministry spokesperson's statement on Rilandor-Beiteynu action offered to the Kundrati News Agency:

We are ashamed of the current action taken against the Beiteynuese embassy in Rildanor. This is an action that is both an international crime and heinous to the general relations around Terra as a whole.

The Kundrati Government urges for calm in the situation and strongly demands that foreign embassies remain away from the fire that the civil war has raged upon the country. Foreigners should also be kept away from the harm of the citizens' attacks upon each other, alongside their businesses and other various properties which should be subject to international protection.

Kundrati urges her citizens inside the country to leave at once if they can and to bring any property they sent to the nation to be removed at once.

If any Kundrati person or property are attacked or harmed in any way, the perpetrators will be subject to the fire and fury of the Kundrati nation.

[TRA]

Beiteynu
An expansion of military naval vessel production

[jebjab]

Kundrati Observer
September 19, 5293

"Plans for Port of Papoč expansion project in southern Kundrati finalized with joint public-private investment"

At the headquarters of the Papoč Port Authority, a feeling of jubilance prevailed above all else, as the town was to receive probably the most attention it has had since its inception. A meeting in the capital city between Prime Minister Tsankov, his cabinet, and dignitaries from Kirlawa was just a passing thought in Papoč, as cars drove to work, boats set off to sea, and the city lazily awoke for another day of work. The town of Papoč’s port was, to most in the country, the only thing notable about it, and that could be said to be true even within the town, as it was the town’s largest employer and the driving force of its development since the Kundrati Civil War. Galensk, about 250km north of the town, was a city blessed with a trailblazing spirit and tremendous industrial growth, the focus of a major economic initiative of the Tsankov government, but as a nascent industrial hub, it had a major problem.

Recent projects had greatly expanded the region’s freight carrying capacity by train, truck, and plane, but it has been undeniable for millenia that the sea, not the land or the air, is the king of international trade, and Galensk was regrettably not a coastal city. What shipping capacity it did have was limited to the relatively small port in Papoč or transit across the nation to the northern port city of Riverford, in the state of Peghonai. By all accounts, both of these methods were not only inconvenient for Galensk’s new industrial tycoons, but inefficient and expensive. As such, the city’s industrial base had been lobbying – at great expense – for an expansion of the capacity of the Port of Papoč, and an effective line by train and by road to the town from the city’s industrial sectors.

Many times these projects had been proposed and shot down, due to endemic underfunding or reluctant members of local government unwilling to cooperate across the aisle. Prime Minister Tsankov, however, had just completed another successful re-election campaign, and was admittedly quite happy with the results; For Kundrati had seen its most successful election campaign in its history, taking the plurality of seats in the National Assembly and losing the Presidential election by a historically narrow 0.08% of the vote.

In the week following the announcement of the election’s results, he was quick to announce the expansion of the Port of Papoč, a decision that nobody could say was quite shocking but nonetheless was a pleasant surprise for most involved, and a sense of opportunity in the town itself. A loan of $200,000,000 signed off on Tuesday by officials from Kirlawa’s influential Lexington family to the joint private-public Port of Papoč, along with an additional $650,000,000 from the government’s infrastructure development fund. This project is expected, according to estimates from the Society of Civil Engineers of Kundrati and official construction plans, to expand the capacity of the Port of Papoč to upwards of 9,000,000 containers per year by the end of the millennium. In addition, Lexington Semiconductors has finalized an agreement with the Port Authority for exclusive shipping rights at the port, expanding the corporation's ability to ship across the continent. This is planned to be paired with industrial expansion by Lexington Corporation in the nearby nascent industrial hub of Galensk, part of the city's successful industrial revitalization project.

[TRA]

Beiteynu
Equifund to form into private consortium of defense companies

[TRA]

Beiteynu
Shipping and travel services booming in Kundrati

[hyraemous]

[6 June 5295]

Kundrati Government and defence partners sign agreement with Equifund
In other news:
Could Kundrati buy new Dundorf tank?
Hazak Nulakakistak wins second Kundrati CupStack Championship
Celanijan wind farm opens to business after nearly a decade of work and struggle

In a meeting with the Defense Minister Aleksandr Nulensky with representatives of the Beiteynuese-dominated Equifund, the Kundrati government announced that their partners and defence companies, especially Kundobraizvoradova (Kundrati obrambeni izvođači radova, or Kundrati Defense Contractors) would be giving good contracts to the Equifund and their partners.

This comes as the Kundrati military continues a massive rampup of expansion - with plans for eventually gaining two submarines and multiple warships, alongside a plan to recruit almost half a million citizens for reserve or active duty in the military. The money would be funded from the wealth Kundrati had gained over the decades and the investment from the Beiteynuese economy which has seen growth in recent decades.

This includes a new patrol ship which would be constructed with the help of shipyards in the southern coast and good amounts of Beiteynuese investment and technology, with Kundrati providing the design and allowing Beiteynu and Equifund to use the patrol ship in exchange for profit off the ship deals. The patrol ship, named the Vespacius-class, will be constructed over a couple of decades noting the technology and abilities of Kundrati and Beiteynu and is expected to be gradually rolled into Kundrati naval use by the 5350s, though hopefully earlier.

With the expansion of the Jildrath Navy Yard and Naval Base to accomodate a good amount of both the Kundrati Southern Fleet and the Artaenian Fleet of Beiteynu, these expansion plans are providing more new jobs which the current right=wing government can boast. Such projects are also helping the Kundrati economy continue it's growth though economic experts from Kundrati and around the world predict that such growth may risk continued Beiteynuese domination of the Kundrati economy to the point where a crash on either side could jolt the other's economy.

However, for now Equifund has the stage for continued cooperation with Kundobraizvoradova to build up what outsiders may claim is a non-existent defence industry for Kundrati. Further information on such deals can be found on the Kundrati Defence Ministry's website.

[Robert F. Kennedy]

The Artanian Times, December 5296: Foreign Secretary to engage in a 'Northern Tour'

[TRA]

Beiteynu
52.5M LOD for clean energy in Likatonia

[TRA]

Beiteynu
Tikkun Haganah partners up with Kundrati and Istalian defense companies for the co-production of artillery and weapons systems