Page 5 - Uzbek Outlook 2024

has one of the youngest and fastest-growing populations in the Former Soviet Union (FSU), and the government is fully focused on job creation and has implemented extensive education reforms and industrial policies to enhance added value. The citizens have seen a palpable improvement in the quality of life in the last six years.
The outlook for 2024 is positive, with the continuation of these policies expected to support Uzbekistan's robust economic growth in recent years.
1.0 Political outlook
Since Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev took over as president in 2016, Uzbekistan has been through a remarkable transition and the economy has been putting in around 6% GDP growth a year, with only a brief pause during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
He won re-election for a second term in office in 2023 and changed the constitution so he can serve for another seven years, so there are no major political events on the calendar for 2024.
Internationally, Mirziyoyev has opened the country up and ended his predecessor Islam Karimov’s pariah status. The country’s human rights record has been improved (although it remains imperfect). The main achievement here is has been to get the embargo on Uzbekistan’s textile and cotton product exports ended, which had been linked to the use of forced and child labour to bring in the crop.
The president has also launched a large-scale privatisation and here the most significant achievement has been the privatisation of the entire cotton business. However, some big assets have also been sold off to foreign investors, starting with the Uzbek Coca-Cola factory.
Rather than just putting large chunks of the economy in private hands, the government policy has also been one to seek out investors that can also add value.
For example, in parallel with selling off cotton production, the government banned the export of raw cotton, forcing local producers to go up market and add value in the form of processing the cotton into textiles or thread. As a result, the value of Uzbekistan’s cotton-related exports quadrupled.
The privatisation process is ongoing, with the first two smallish banks being sold off in 2023, but the sale of the biggest banks is going slowly. Other huge industrial concerns, especially the Navoi Metal and Mining Kombinat, the country’s main gold producer, are also supposed to go under the gavel in the near future. But the full privatisation programme will take years to complete.
On the ground all these changes have been welcomed by the population, which have seen their incomes rise rapidly and the state set up a responsive local government under the Mahalla system – a form of local councils that give residents direct and regular access to local government, where they can demand improvements or changes to local infrastructure and services.
5 Uzbekistan Outlook 2021 www.intellinews.com