The figures came from the president himself, at a meeting with investors and entrepreneurs in New Tashkent on Monday morning, Gazeta.uz reported from the presidential press service. The state is directing large sums into the infrastructure, the stadium, the university and the library, he said, and construction is under way on more than 1,000 hectares, mostly at the state’s expense. Entrepreneurs have been allotted 94 hectares in all, he said.
He set the plan’s scale against that. The city has 20,000 hectares, the first stage covers 6,000 hectares with $50 billion of projects, and with the planned new airport the territory’s investment potential could reach $200 billion, by his account. Three years in, the invested sum stands above $2 billion, and he did not say how much of it is private.
Entrepreneurs have been allotted 94 hectares in all, he said.
The order to the prime minister followed. Abdulla Aripov, who chairs the coordination council for the construction, is to begin transferring the other ministries and state organisations to the new city, where the construction and utilities ministry, the transport ministry and the energy ministry already work in prefabricated buildings and nine buildings for 2,600 officials are going up. The buildings the state bodies occupy in Tashkent may be put up for sale where needed, without the right to demolish or rebuild them.
A presidential resolution of April 2024 had already provided for moving state bodies and for spending the proceeds of their old buildings on the new administrative ones. The relocation matters for forming the new city’s business life, the president said on Monday. In effect the ministries become the anchor tenants of districts the private sector has yet to fill.
The same day he opened seven facilities with a combined project value of $1 billion and started ten projects worth $2.5 billion, by the press service’s figures as Gazeta.uz and Spot.uz printed them. Among those opened are the first phase of the Shark Bahori housing complex, the Yangi Toshkent substation, a trigeneration plant built with the Turkish company Mimsan for $73 million to heat and cool 100,000 households, a new chamber of commerce building, the Sokhil Bogi park and a school for 2,000 pupils. Among those started are the Deep Tech industrial zone, the Metropolis business centre, a 10-kilometre road to the capital, a central hospital and a park on the Chirchik.
By the end of the year the city is to hand over 20,000 flats, housing for at least 70,000 people, and a 55,000-seat stadium to FIFA requirements is being built for next year’s under-20 World Cup, which Uzbekistan hosts. The press service did not say who financed the facilities opened on Monday.
The president asked for an exact count of the hotels, cafes, restaurants and entertainment the visitors will need, to be offered to entrepreneurs. At the first stage 30% of the territory was to go to parks and squares, and the planned volume is 150 million square metres of housing and other buildings, by the press service’s description of the project.
The numbers the president put on the table measure the gap he named, and the ministries are what he moved to close it. Whether the sale of the old buildings in Tashkent pays for the new ones is the sum the April 2024 resolution assumed and Monday’s figures do not show.