Page 42 - bneMag Dec22

42 I Special Report bne December 2022
Uzbekistan has launched its second five year plan to build the "New Uzbekistan" at the annual investment conference in Samarkand / bne IntelliNews
Building the New Uzbekistan Ben Aris in Samarakand
Hundreds of delegates gathered in the legendary Silk Road city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan on November 3 for the second Uzbekistan Economic Forum to learn about the progress the country has made during these crisis years and its plans for
the future.
Uzbekistan's first five-year transformation plan has come to an end, and this conference launches the second “New Uzbekistan” plan that will run to 2026. The first plan has been very successful, with economic activity visibly picking up in about 2018, but the new plan is supposed to deliver a root-and-branch transformation of the economy into a fast growing market economy driven by the inflow of private capital from domestic and international sources.
The key message, and indeed the theme of the whole conference, was inclusive
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“reforms for the people.” Uzbekistan has one of the youngest populations in the FSU with an average age of 29 years. It is also the fastest growing population in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Since 1991 at the end of Soviet Union the population of 20mn has grown to 36mn now and in the next three years it will overtake
both Poland and Ukraine in terms of numbers of inhabitants before hitting 70mn by 2050.
That demographic explosion, especially in the context of the demographic collapse that is happening in nearly every other country in Eurasia, including Russia and the EU, could be the basis of decades of strong growth. But it also presents a challenge to the government to provide jobs for its swelling youth.
Anna Bjerde, the Vice President of the
World Bank, emphasised that social issues – education and health chief among them – are one of the bank’s top three focuses for the coming years.
In his address in the opening session of the congress, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev highlighted that a key part of the social programme, that is also part of the government’s heavy ESG focus, is to reduce poverty by 50%
by 2030. Poverty has already been reduced from 22.8% in 2018 to under 16% now and less than 5% compared to the global poverty line, the World Bank said.
The World Bank has thrown itself into the same programmes and added that incomes are also supposed to double to $4,000 a month. Currently Uzbekistan per capita income is about a tenth of those in the more prosperous, petro- fuelled, Kazakh economy.