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64 Opinion bne July 2021
The Navoi Mining Company is one of the biggest gold and uranium mines in the world and is slated along with other valuable companies to be sold to investors.
More speed, less haste – finding the right balance in preparation for Uzbekistan’s SOE privatisation
Fiezullah Saidov director of Uzbekistan Equities in Tashkent
In May 2021, Uzbekistan's State Asset Management Agency (UzSAMA) and the World Bank arranged a high-level international forum held in the Hyatt Regency Tashkent to lay out the roadmap for Uzbekistan’s privatisation of some of its most valuable companies.
The quality of the audience was a sign of the government’s commitment to making privatisation a success. Amongst the attendees from the Uzbek government were: Jamshid Kuchkarov, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Poverty Reduction; Timur Ishmetov, the Minister of Finance; Omonulla Nasretdinhojaev, first Deputy Minister of Finance; Adham Ikramov, the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the chairman of UzSAMA, Akmalhon Ortikov.
High-level international participants were also well represented, including the World Bank’s Central Asian vice- president Anna Bjerde, the EBRD’s managing director for Central Asia Zsuzhanna Hargitai, and Sir Suma Chakrabarti, ex-chairman of EBRD who is now working as an advisor to
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the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Economic Development, among many others.
The keynote speaker of the event was HE Deputy Prime Minister Jamshid Kuchkarov, who set the tone to the forum
by declaring the goal of the government in the mid-term: the government wants to increase GDP per capita from the current $1,700 to $2,500 in 2025 and $4,200 in 2030 and this would require GDP growth of 6 to 7% per annum.
As bne IntelliNews reported in the feature “The Growers,” in 2020 Uzbekistan was one of a handful of countries in the world not to go into recession despite the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, due to economic reforms that were launched prior to the pandemic and timely funding from international financial institutions (IFIs) to soften the economic blow of the pandemic.
The government sees the path to achieving this growth by attracting more private funding to the economy; hence the government needs to sell assets. To obtain better prices for the