Page 2 - Uzbekistan rising bne IntelliNews special report

2 I Special Report: Uzbekistan Rising bne December 2021
Uzbekistan rising
Ben Aris in Tashkent
Uzbekistan’s economy is taking off. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who was just re-elected for another five years, took over five
years ago and launched a radical
reform programme. He re-opened the country to the rest of the world. The government started frenetically working to modernise and put the country on a market footing. At the same time, the president launched a diplomatic effort to better integrate Uzbekistan in the region and further afield, as well as
try to create something like a common market with his neighbours in the region. Now all that work is starting
to bear fruit.
A tour of the country in October revealed extraordinary progress. In an unsung success the entire cotton sector – long the backbone of the country’s economy to the extent that cotton plants are part of the nation’s symbol – has been completely privatised and the entire sector put into privately owned commercial hands. The wheat sector, also strategically important and also
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part of the national emblem, is currently undergoing the same transformation, which will be completed next year.
A string of banks are being prepared for privatisation and the first big bank, the mortgage specialist Ipoteka Bank, has already been sold to Hungarian investors, with another nine banks from the total of 12 to
be put under the gavel soon.
But more impressive is that every factory and kombinat visited on
the tour is in the midst of, or has already completed, investment projects to expand and modernise their production to meet burgeoning demand and rapidly growing exports.
The lifting of currency controls in 2017 that transformed the foreign trade regime means Uzbekistan’s biggest and best enterprises have seized the opportunity to start exports, which have ballooned. Initially only involving the country’s immediate neighbours in the first round, foreign trade has since
expanded and exports are now going
to the whole of the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS), China, Turkey and even the African market, which has recently been opened to made-in-Uzbekistan goods. The country was awarded the sought-after general preferential trade status for textile exports to the EU in April; this allows
it to sell cotton fabric and fibre without duties or quota restrictions. Textile exports have already more than doubled this year, and privately owned white goods manufacture Artel has become the biggest maker of consumer gizmos in the whole CIS. Its factory, located in the wastes of the Kyzyl-Kum desert, is becoming a truly international business.
The sense of optimism is palpable.
The lives of the ordinary people have improved materially. Mirziyoyev’s re-election on October 24 was criticised for the total lack of any real opposition candidates, but according to voters polled by this publication he would have won a landslide victory even
if there had been competition. The