Economy of Uzbekistan

[14] Under the administration of Islam Karimov currency conversion capacity was restricted, imports were controlled and Uzbekistan's borders with neighboring Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan were sporadically closed.

Since the election of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Uzbekistan economic and social reforms have been implemented to boost growth and modernize the country.

[20] The Uzbekistan Economic Forum run by the Ministry of Finance brings together IFIs, businesses, government officials and other stakeholders on an annual basis.

This is a chart depicting the trend of the gross domestic product in Uzbekistan in constant prices of 1995, estimated by the International Monetary Fund with figures in millions of soum.

[23] The chart also shows the consumer price index(CPI) as a measure of inflation from the same source and the end-of-year U.S. dollar exchange rate from the Central Bank of the Uzbekistan database.

[25] Uzbekistan's GDP, like that of all CIS countries, declined during the first years of transition and then recovered after 1995, as the cumulative effect of policy reforms began to be felt.

With the closing or downsizing of many foreign firms, it is relatively easy to find qualified employees, though salaries are very low by Western standards.

Stabilization efforts implemented with active guidance from the International Monetary Fund rapidly paid off, as inflation rates were brought down to 50% in 1997 and then to 22% in 2002.

[25] The severe inflationary pressures that characterized the early years of independence inevitably led to a dramatic depreciation of the national currency.

[24] Then the depreciation of the soum virtually stopped in response to the government's stabilization program, which at the same time dramatically reduced the inflation rates.

From 1996 until the spring of 2003, the official and so-called "commercial" exchange rate – both set administratively by the Central Bank – were highly overvalued.

Many businesses and individuals were unable to buy dollars legally at these "low" rates, so a widespread black market developed to meet hard currency demand.

[33] By mid-2003, the government's stabilization and liberalization efforts had reduced the gap between the black market, official, and commercial rates to approximately 8% and it quickly disappeared as the soum was made convertible after October 2003.

Today, four foreign currencies—the U.S. dollar, the euro, the pound sterling, and the yen—are freely exchanged in commercial booths all around the cities, while other currencies, including the Russian rouble and the Kazakh tenge, are bought and sold by individual ("black market") money changers, who are allowed to operate openly without harassment.

[35] At the end of 2013, the government announced through the Central Bank of the Republic of Uzbekistan that it predicted agriculture as playing a major component of the country's economic development in the future.

[37] Cotton, once Uzbekistan's star cash earner, has lost much its luster since independence as wheat began to gain prominence from considerations of food security for the rapidly growing population.

Government intervention in agriculture is reflected in the persistence of state orders for the two main cash crops, cotton and wheat.

Farmers receive binding directives on the area to be cropped to these commodities and are obliged to surrender their harvest to designated marketers at state-fixed prices.

The incomes of farmers and agricultural workers are substantially lower than the national average because the government pays them less than the world prices for their cotton and wheat, using the difference to subsidize capital intensive industrial concerns, such as factories producing automobiles, airplanes, and tractors.

Consequently, many farmers focus on production of fruits and vegetables on their small household plots, because the prices of these commodities are determined by supply and demand, not by government decrees.

[26] Sales of own-produced milk, meat, and vegetables in town markets are an important source for augmenting rural family incomes.

The Soviet practice of using "volunteer labor" to help gathering the cotton harvest continues in Uzbekistan where schoolchildren, university students, medical professionals, and state employees are driven en masse out to the fields every year.

[29] A recent article posted by a domestic news agency (admittedly with strong anti-government leanings) describes Uzbekistan's cotton as "riches gathered by the hands of hungry children".

It has observer status at the World Trade Organization, is a member of the World Intellectual Property Organization, and is a signatory to the Convention on Settlement of Investment Disputes Between States and Nationals of Other States, the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, the Madrid Agreement on Trademarks Protection, and the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

Until 2017, according to EBRD transition indicators,[52] Uzbekistan's investment climate remains among the least favorable in the CIS, with only Belarus and Turkmenistan ranking lower.

Other large U.S. investors in Uzbekistan include Case IH, manufacturing and servicing cotton harvesters and tractors; Coca-Cola, with bottling plants in Tashkent, Namangan, and Samarkand; Texaco, producing lubricants for sale in the Uzbek market; and Baker Hughes, in oil and gas development.

Liquidity management is constrained be the lack of deep capital markets, and banks generally tend to hold substantial cash reserves on their balance sheets.

The quality of capital is sometimes compromised by less conservative regulatory requirements for recognition of credit impairment and by investments in non-core assets.

Uzbekistan's retail sector remains dominated by traditional markets, known as bozorlar, where individual vendors sell food, housewares, clothing, and other consumer goods.

[62] According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Vlast, and iStories, after February 24, 2022, Uzbekistan significantly increased its exports of cotton pulp and nitrocellulose, key components for making explosives and gunpowder, to Russia.

Uzbekistan: growth of GDP in constant prices 1992–2008 [ 25 ]
Tashkent City Park
Uzbekistan export destinations in 2006
Daewoo Gentra is currently a flagship of UzDaewooAuto .