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bne July 2022 Cover story I 39
most talented software developers to Tashkent. When Belarus held one of the planes on the tarmac and refused to let it leave, Uzbekistan’s President Mirziyoyev jumped on the phone
to intervene. The flight took off.
The relocation programme provides perks to tech immigrants including credit cards and sim cards, housing
dependence on physical trade routes and lifting more of the population in this low-income country out of poverty. The trip to California throws the opportunity of technology into sharp focus. California, roughly the same physical size as Uzbekistan, has
a GDP of more than $3 trillion. In 2020, Uzbekistan’s was $57.7bn, according
to World Bank Data. California’s
geopolitical importance has been boosted by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Taliban take over in Afghanistan.
While the growth targets may seem ambitious from Uzbekistan’s point of view, reaching the goal of $1bn would require securing only a tiny fraction of the US market. The US accounts for the lion’s share of the global IT outsourcing market, expected to be worth as much as $682.3bn by 2027 – up from just over $526bn last year, according to Mordor Intelligence. About 80% of Uzbekistan’s IT exports currently go to the US
“One billion within a few years? Yeah, it's pretty doable and we are very confident about it,’’ Ruzmatov, who
has landed dozens of clients in the US
in just the last few years, said in the interview. “And if business is confident and the government is supportive, I think we have everything, everything on hand to do it and to make it happen.”
The US appears to like what it’s seeing in Uzbekistan. Daniel Rosenblum,
the US ambassador to the country, visited Tashkent’s IT Park this month
“Uzbekistan’s goal is to grow the volume of the country’s IT exports to $1bn by 2028, a 25-fold increase from last year”
assistance, help finding jobs for spouses and registration of children at schools and a “One Stop Shop” to deal with red tape, recruit personnel and find offices. Working with contacts developed during Uzbekistan’s study of the IT industry in Belarus, they
got the word out that Uzbekistan was ready to provide a warm welcome.
“The first days of this event were, you know, a big rush,” Ibragimov said in
a joint interview with the minister. “Everybody was worried. And even the plane tickets were extremely expensive at the time. We tried to organise and help in everything. Now those companies are happy with us since we were friendly with them when they were in need.”
Growth ambitions
Uzbekistan’s goal is to grow the volume of the country’s IT exports to $1bn
by 2028, a 25-fold increase from last year. The target for 2022 is $100mn, more than double the total from
2021 and 50-times what IT exports earned in the first year in 2017. At $1bn, Uzbekistan’s IT exports would surpass the value of agricultural goods and textiles. In short, Uzbekistan is aiming to turn knowledge-based IT exports into the biggest economic driver in the country after gold.
A shift from $6.2mn in IT exports in 2019 to the targeted $1bn in less than a decade would be nothing short of
a revolution – reducing the country’s
GDP per capita is $85,546 (2021), compared with $1,900 in Uzbekistan.
In California, the trade delegation has fixed meetings with executives from several companies including Apple, Google, Meta, PayPal and Coursera in Silicon Valley, according to the minister. The initial meetings in New York and Washington will deal with more general political questions as Uzbekistan’s
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