Report

Uzbekistan: A Reform Story Worth Acting On

Where Uzbekistan's investment case stands in 2026, what the government is already fixing, and where the right local partner still makes the difference.

Nazar Advisory · Tashkent · August 2026

Executive summary

Uzbekistan's investment case has moved from narrative to evidence between 2025 and 2026: sustained growth, a landmark international listing, upgraded credit ratings from all three major agencies, and a reform program that now extends to constitutional law. International investors have taken notice, and with good reason; this is one of the more credible growth and reform stories among frontier markets today.

Interest, however, has moved faster than familiarity. Independent surveys and market data show investors more engaged with the region than at any point in the past decade, yet their working knowledge of it has plateaued, and much of what shapes their view still comes from general media rather than dedicated, ground-level sources. That is a solvable gap, not a reason for caution: it means the case for Uzbekistan is, if anything, stronger than the average investor currently appreciates, provided the picture is built on the right information.

This briefing sets out that case in four steps: the scale of the opportunity, a clear-eyed view of what still deserves attention, the substantial reform program already addressing most of it, and the narrower set of judgment calls, mainly about specific counterparties and decision-makers, that depend on having a reliable presence on the ground rather than on any law.

Reading this briefing at a glance

1. Uzbekistan: a significant opportunity, increasingly hard to ignore

The macro case is no longer speculative. The economy grew an estimated 7.7% in real terms in 2025, up from 6.5% in 2024 and among the fastest rates of any economy tracked by major investors, taking GDP above $145 billion, among the world's sixty largest economies, on the back of a population approaching 38 million, over 60% of it under the age of 30 ¹. Total foreign investment reached a record $43.1 billion in 2025, up roughly 24% year on year and equivalent to close to a third of GDP, and the government has set an even more ambitious target of $50 billion for 2026, focused on export-oriented, higher-value projects ¹.

Uzbekistan's long-running bid to join the World Trade Organization is also entering its final stretch: after concluding bilateral market-access talks with the large majority of the working party, the government has targeted, and as recently as this August reaffirmed, completing accession by the end of 2026 ¹¹, a step that would lock in tariff commitments and align trade rules with international norms in a way no domestic reform can replicate on its own.

The clearest test of whether international capital would actually show up came in May 2026, when the National Investment Fund of Uzbekistan (UzNIF) completed the country's first international listing, simultaneously on the London and Tashkent stock exchanges, raising roughly $600 million through the sale of a 31% stake against demand exceeding $2.8 billion, more than four times covered ¹. Credit rating agencies have moved in the same direction: Fitch upgraded Uzbekistan's sovereign rating to 'BB' and revised the outlook to Positive in June 2026, Moody's rates the sovereign Ba2 with a stable outlook, and S&P rates it BB, also stable ^{4 5}, an unusual degree of agreement across three independent agencies on the direction of travel.

The window is widened further by geopolitics: the November 2025 C5+1 summit in Washington produced more than $130 billion in commercial commitments across the region, and the European Union's April 2025 Samarkand summit committed up to €12 billion under its Global Gateway framework ¹. Domestically, a $30 billion pipeline of privatization and public-private-partnership opportunities is scheduled through 2030 across energy, transport, healthcare and other essential services ³. Investor sentiment has followed: 67.1% of UK and 65.5% of US investors surveyed in 2026 report strong or moderate interest in the region, sharply above levels of two years ago ¹.

Sources: Montfort Eurasia [1]; Fitch, Moody's, S&P rating actions [4][5]; PwC [3].

A broader base than the headline numbers suggest

The macro-financial buffer behind these headline figures has strengthened as well. Gold and foreign-currency reserves reached a record $66.3 billion at the start of 2026, roughly 86% held in gold ¹⁷, inflation eased to 7.3%, its lowest level in nine years, giving the central bank room to hold its policy rate at 14% rather than tighten further, and public finances have stayed conservative by regional standards, with public debt at approximately 33.5% of GDP and the 2025 budget deficit contained at 2.1% of GDP ¹. For investors, the more practical question is usually what happens to capital once it needs to leave: the som has floated freely since the 2017 liberalization of the currency regime, and the Law on Investments and Investment Activity guarantees the free repatriation of profits, dividends and other funds after tax, backed by a ten-year stabilization clause protecting investors against adverse changes in tax law ¹⁶, a combination of macro stability and clear repatriation rights that frontier markets do not offer as a matter of course.

The resource base adds a further, longer-term dimension. Uzbekistan holds workable reserves of more than thirty critical minerals, including tungsten, among the top three prospective producers worldwide, alongside significant copper and uranium deposits, and has committed $4.2 billion to a 2026-2030 program of some 120 exploration and processing projects covering tungsten, lithium, cobalt and other battery and industrial metals, targeting $1 billion in annual output by 2028 ¹⁸. Washington has moved to back that ambition directly: Uzbekistan joined the US-led Forum on Resource and Geostrategic Engagement in early 2026, and the US Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank have both agreed financing frameworks for Uzbek mining, processing and energy projects, explicitly framed around diversifying global critical-minerals supply chains away from a single dominant source ¹⁸. The same period has seen a parallel build-out in clean generation, with the government targeting a 54% renewable share of the power mix by 2030 ¹⁹, making Uzbekistan one of the more credible frontier-market plays on both the critical-minerals and energy-transition themes now shaping Western industrial and investment policy.

The digital economy shows a similar pattern of policy running ahead of general awareness. IT Park, Uzbekistan's flagship technology zone, exempts resident companies from corporate tax and mandatory state-fund contributions, applies a flat 7.5% personal income tax and a 0% social tax on payroll, and grants zero customs duties on imported hardware and software, with these terms extended to 2040 for companies that export more than half their revenue; resident numbers have grown from roughly 2,400 in late 2024 toward a 3,000 target, and export revenue reached $191.8 million in the first quarter of 2026 alone, up around a quarter year on year ²⁰. The government has extended the same logic to Karakalpakstan, the autonomous republic in the country's northwest, designating it a tax-free zone for large-scale AI and data-center investment on the strength of its spare power capacity, favorable climate for cooling, and available land, with electricity priced as low as $0.05 per kilowatt-hour for qualifying projects; early commitments include a facility planned to scale toward 500 megawatts and a $130.9 million renewable-powered AI data center agreed with a Taiwanese and US technology consortium ²¹, an early but concrete sign that Uzbekistan intends to compete for a share of the infrastructure investment now flowing into AI and digital infrastructure worldwide.

2. A clear-eyed view of what still deserves attention

The same evidence that supports the opportunity also points to where the picture is still filling in. None of it warrants hesitation: it is either already being addressed by active reform, as will become clear shortly, or simply the ordinary texture of a fast-moving frontier market, best navigated with good local information.

Curiosity outpacing expertise

Despite record interest, investors' self-assessed knowledge of the region has plateaued at 6.63 out of 10 for UK respondents and 6.79 for US respondents in 2026, essentially flat versus last year's high, and more than a fifth still cannot answer basic questions specifically about Uzbekistan ¹. Part of the reason is the information diet: media and general internet coverage remain a primary source for 58.4% of UK and 58.1% of US investors, on a par with financial analysis (68.6% and 56.6% respectively), leaving comparatively little room for dedicated, independent, locally sourced analysis ¹. Asset managers active in the region describe the same gap from the buy side: for years Central Asia "had the ingredients emerging markets investors traditionally look for"; "the bottleneck was not the macro story", it was confirmation that the story could be trusted, which requires being there rather than reading about it ⁶. Specialist coverage is only now catching up: a dedicated equity research provider announced, for the first time, issuer-funded analyst coverage spanning "Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia" in June 2026 ⁷, a useful step, though issuer-funded research remains a different, less independent, product than one an investor commissions directly.

Rules that are still catching up with practice, in places

Independent assessment points to a few areas still maturing: a foreign-investment screening framework that is not yet fully standardized across strategic sectors, regulatory interpretation that can still vary by locality, and court enforcement that is becoming steadily more consistent but is not yet uniform ⁸. As the following pages set out, several of these are the direct object of the current reform program.

A state sector still working through its transition

State-owned enterprises still account for a significant share, more than 30%, of GDP, and continue to shape pricing and access in some enabling sectors; when firms are surveyed directly, access to finance and tax rates remain, alongside skills gaps, among the constraints they cite most often ². This is precisely the transition that the privatization program described earlier, and detailed further below, is designed to complete.

Finding, and correctly reading, the right local partners

The more common friction, in Uzbekistan as in any fast-growing frontier market, sits at the level of the specific relationship rather than the country as a whole: which local partner has the standing and the track record to deliver, how a given ownership or management structure is actually put together, and who genuinely holds the mandate to take a decision. None of this shows up in country statistics, and none of it is resolved by a law; it is resolved by direct, current, on-the-ground knowledge of the people and institutions involved, built over time rather than assembled for a single transaction.

Most of the points above are already being addressed directly by policy, and the record of the past eighteen months is substantial; the remainder is simply the ordinary, manageable work of doing business well in a market that is still building out its institutions.

3. Pragmatic reform, with results already showing

On the dimensions within a sovereign's control, the record of the past eighteen months shows real, specific movement, and in several cases it goes further than is commonly appreciated abroad. Currency and trade liberalization, a VAT cut from 20% to 12%, and a "Single Window" widened from 96 to 400 services have simplified transactions; a Foreign Investors Council and a Public Finance Management Strategy for 2025-2030 target fiscal transparency directly; and energy-tariff reform has cut central subsidies from roughly UZS 18 trillion in 2023 to UZS 7 trillion in 2025 ⁹.

Digitization has produced measurable results, not just intentions. The Customs Information System's Single Window, in place since 2020, has cut permit issuance times 2.6-fold, and the government's wider e-government push has moved tax filing, customs clearance and public procurement onto integrated online platforms, shortening processing times and reducing the number of manual steps a transaction has to pass through ¹⁴. Public procurement is being modernized on a similar basis: the government's target is for 80% of procurement to run through competitive procedures by 2030, direct-contract lists were cancelled from January 2026, and an AI-based tool now flags prices that deviate more than 10-20% from market averages for review, broadening competition and improving value for money, with projected savings of up to UZS 25 trillion ¹⁵. In May 2026, a further joint Instruction introduced a structured, checklist-based review process, with statutory timelines, for investment or PPP projects above roughly $50 million that involve state budget financing, PPP structuring, or foreign investment with state support, adding a further layer of process discipline to how large projects are approved ¹⁰.

WTO accession, under negotiation for years, is now explicitly targeted for 2026, with the government reaffirming that commitment as recently as this August ¹¹. The Tashkent International Financial Centre has moved from proposal to law: President Mirziyoyev signed the Constitutional Law establishing the Centre on 13 July 2026, following Senate-requested revisions and a conciliation commission that strengthened investor protections; the law amends Article 15 of the Constitution and harmonizes seven codes and more than thirty other laws, and will give participants an English common-law regime, an independent commercial court, and tax certainty through 2076 ¹².

The clearest validation has come from the market itself: all three major rating agencies moved in the same direction over the past year, Fitch to 'BB' with the outlook revised to Positive, Moody's to Ba2 stable, S&P to BB stable ^{4 5}, while the UzNIF privatization, the first real test of whether international capital would show up, drew more than four times the demand needed to cover it ¹. Across law, tax, procurement and the constitution itself, Uzbekistan has been willing to make structural changes that most reforming economies attempt one at a time rather than together, and independent rating agencies and capital markets have, so far, responded in kind.

4. What still depends on private actors, not on legislation

Regulatory modernization and the state's shrinking footprint are squarely government's to complete, and government is completing them, at a pace the record above bears out. What remains sits at a different level entirely: not what the rules say, but who a given investor actually needs to know, and how well, before committing.

Relationships still carry more weight than paperwork

Independent analysis of doing business in the region continues to note that success requires "navigating regulatory frameworks, informal networks, and regional geopolitical balances" ¹³ alongside whatever the statute books say. Knowing who actually decides, and why, is a separate exercise from knowing what the law provides for, and it is where a genuine, long-standing local network adds most value, in Uzbekistan as in any relationship-driven economy.

Partner selection is irreducibly specific

A track record, an ownership structure, or a management team's standing cannot be read off a country-level statistic; it has to be assessed partner by partner, deal by deal. That is not a comment on Uzbekistan in particular, it is simply how due diligence works in any market where formal registries and disclosure are still maturing, and it is precisely the kind of verification that direct, current, on-the-ground relationships are best placed to provide.

The intelligence available is still catching up with the interest it serves

Investors report that their working knowledge of the region has plateaued even as interest has risen ¹, independent, investor-paid research coverage is only now emerging as a distinct offering ⁷, and much of what is publicly available is either macro-level (rating-agency and multilateral output, valuable but not decision-specific) or first-party government and corporate material (useful but not independent). The space in between remains comparatively thin: sourced, dated, continuously updated material written for a specific decision rather than a general audience is still the exception rather than the rule.

These points share a common feature: they are properties of markets, relationships and information, not of statutes. They will keep closing gradually as institutions mature, and in the meantime they reward investors who bring their own good local information rather than waiting for the gap to close on its own.

5. Where this leaves an investor

The reform momentum set out above is, on its own, a reason to engage now rather than later. It is also worth being precise about the narrower set of judgment calls just described, since those are best handled with a standing, independent, on-the-ground capability rather than assumed away.

Nazar Advisory was built for precisely that narrower set of gaps. It combines investment-banking-grade discipline, a former Rothschild & Co professional among its founders, with a genuine, permanent Uzbek network in Tashkent and a bench of per-mandate sector experts across mining, agribusiness, banking, industrials, and energy and infrastructure. In practice this means continuously updated, independently sourced intelligence on the pipeline and the people who run it; direct, verified introductions to the decision-makers who matter; and case-by-case verification of the specific counterparties an investor is being asked to trust, all delivered as fixed-fee, documented advisory work that a bank's or fund's own compliance team can approve without difficulty, rather than success-based commissions that raise more questions than they answer.

For a conversation, or a pilot issue of our monthly intelligence briefing, contact Guillaume Moinet (guillaume.moinet@nazaradvisory.com) or Zulfiya Zakirova (zulfiya.zakirova@nazaradvisory.com), co-founders of Nazar Advisory.

References

1. [1]Montfort Eurasia, Investor Perception Report, Central Asia and the Caucasus, 2026.
2. [2]World Bank Group, Uzbekistan: Country Private Sector Diagnostic, July 2026.
3. [3]PwC, Investment Guide Uzbekistan 2026 (5th Tashkent International Investment Forum edition), June 2026.
4. [4]Fitch Ratings, sovereign rating actions on Uzbekistan, 2026, as reported by UzDaily and Xinhua (4 June 2026).
5. [5]Moody's Investors Service, rating action on Uzbekistan, June 2026; S&P Global Ratings, sovereign rating action, 21 November 2025.
6. [6]VanEck, "Before the Crowd: Central Asia's New Investment Window," Emerging Markets Equity blog.
7. [7]"European Equity Research Partners launches issuer-funded analyst coverage across Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia," GlobeNewswire, 18 June 2026.
8. [8]U.S. Department of State, 2024 Investment Climate Statements: Uzbekistan.
9. [9]EBRD, Transition Report 2025-26, Central Asia country assessment.
10. [10]Kosta Legal, "Mandatory Anti-Corruption and Competition Reviews: New Procedure for Large Investment and PPP Projects," Legal Alert, August 2026.
11. [11]"Uzbekistan reaffirms commitment to finalize WTO accession in 2026," Gazeta.uz, 3 August 2026.
12. [12]"Tashkent International Financial Center," Kun.uz, 17 July 2026; framework background from Gazeta.uz, 15 April 2026.
13. [13]Eurasia Strategy Insights, "Doing Business in Central Asia: Partner of Choice?"
14. [14]World Customs Journal, "The Effect on Anti-Corruption of the Customs Information Systems of the Republic of Uzbekistan."
15. [15]Frank.uz, "Uzbekistan to Radically Reform Its Public Procurement System."
16. [16]Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan "On Investments and Investment Activity"; as summarized in PVknowhow.
17. [17]"Uzbekistan's Gold and Currency Reserves Reach $66.3 Billion," Gazeta.uz, 10 January 2026.
18. [18]"Uzbekistan's $4.2 Billion Critical Minerals Plan," The Times of Central Asia, 2026; "US, Uzbekistan Forge Critical Minerals Pact," Metal Tech News, 25 February 2026.
19. [19]"Uzbekistan Intends to Boost Share of Renewable Energy Sources to 54% by 2030," Interfax, 2026.
20. [20]IT Park Uzbekistan tax regime, LegalAct.uz; export figures from Zamin.uz, 28 May 2026.
21. [21]"Uzbekistan Launches Tax-Free Zone for Major AI and Data Centre Projects," Euronews, 18 November 2025; The Times of Central Asia; IT Park Uzbekistan.

This briefing distinguishes confirmed information, market intelligence and reasonable inference throughout; figures for 2026 reflect the most recent data available as of August 2026 and may be revised as the year closes.