Uzbekistan Country Commercial Guide
Learn about the market conditions, opportunities, regulations, and business conditions in uzbekistan, prepared by at U.S. Embassies worldwide by Commerce Department, State Department and other U.S. agencies’ professionals
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Market Opportunities
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The growth in public and private investments resulting from the government’s export-oriented and import- substitution industrial policy agenda may create more opportunities for U.S. businesses. Good market prospects may be found in the following areas:
Banking: The government plans to transition the banking industry from public to private capital, with a target of expanding the private sector’s share to 60% by 2026. The income tax rate for banks was reduced from 20% to 15% starting from 2023. The government raised the size of the minimum authorized capital of a bank from the current 100 billion soum ($8.6 million at the July 28, 2023, exchange rate) to 200 billion soum starting from September 2023, to 350 billion soum from April 2024 and to 500 billion soum from January 2025. State-owned banks are in the process of modernizing their client service systems, transitioning to international financial reporting standards, and improving corporate governance to increase their attractiveness to foreign investors. In December 2022 OTP Bank (Hungary) acquired 73.7% of Uzbekistan’s fifth largest bank Ipoteka Bank for $324 million and will buy the remaining 25% within the next three years. The state-owned UzPromStroyBank (second largest) and Asaka bank (fourth largest) plan to attract $125 million and $100 million of foreign investments to their capital respectively in 2023.  

Privatization of state-owned enterprises

 The President’s new privatization decree signed on March 23, 2023, lists the state assets that will be privatized. The largest assets on the list are shares in construction and agriculture machinery plants, a bridge construction company, chemical companies, a software producer, an electronics manufacturer, gas stations, and hotel buildings.  

Education: The government intends to increase the number of students attending university (particularly in technical fields) to 50% of all high school graduates by 2030 and plans to build 30 new universities to accommodate them.  The government wants to attract foreign universities interested in establishing branches in Uzbekistan or creating dual degree programs with local universities. Budget of the Higher Education Ministry was increased by 44.2% in 2023.

Tourism

Developing tourism is among the major priorities of the Government and the number of foreign tourists was rapidly increasing prior to the coronavirus pandemic. Tourist visits fell by more than 77% in 2020 and rebounded by 25% to 1.8 million in 2021. The number almost tripled to 5.2 million in 2022. Uzbekistan’s development strategy for 2022-2026 set a target of increasing the number of foreign tourists visiting the country to nine million by 2026. In March 2022, Russia and Uzbekistan signed an action plan to increase the flow of tourists. The Government created incentives for the construction of international class hotels and other infrastructure in the Great Silk Road cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva, and for connecting them to Tashkent. The management of four airports in Andijan, Namangan, Bukhara and Urgench cities will be transferred to the private sector on a public-private partnership basis.
Oil and Gas: Projects in the oil and gas industry are intended to attract about $36.5 billion in investment from various sources through 2030. These projects may represent good export opportunities for U.S. suppliers of oil and gas extraction, transportation, processing technologies, and oil services.

Public-Private Partnership

Under Uzbekistan’s law on Public-Private Partnership, there are new opportunities for foreign investors to participate in large projects. Tenders were operated by the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Development Agency, which became a department of the Ministry of Economy and Finance in 2023. Since 2018, foreign bidders have signed PPP agreements to implement several fossil fuel and renewable energy projects. The Government wants to attract investments in the amount of $14 billion on a PPP basis to the energy, transport, healthcare, education, ecology, utilities, water management and other sectors in 2022-2026.

Food Processing and Packaging

Growing external demand for food products produced in Uzbekistan and efforts to improve the productivity of the agricultural sector create export opportunities for suppliers of food preservation, processing, and packaging technologies as well as transportation and logistics solutions. 

ICT

An ambitious government program aimed at developing a national information-communication system and upgrading communications infrastructure to the 5G standard creates increasing demand for IT solutions in both the public and private sectors of the economy. The government adopted its “Digital Uzbekistan – 2030 Strategy” in October 2020 to intensify work in this direction.
Chemical industry: The 2019-2030 national program for the development of the chemical industry has identified 31 projects with a total value of $12 billion. The government plans to increase production of higher value-added goods through mineral processing.
SOE procurement: Starting on July 5, 2021, President Mirziyoyev obliged large state-owned enterprises and several ministries to conduct their procurements only through public tenders.