The signed part is law ZRU-1168, on guarantees of the freedom of entrepreneurial activity, which Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed on 17 August. It writes principles: property can be seized only by court order and with full compensation, and state action to reverse the results of privatization is unlawful. Norma.uz published its summary of the text on Tuesday.
The spoken part came at an open dialogue with entrepreneurs in Khorezm on Tuesday. Mirziyoyev announced fines on business cut by an average of 50%, a 10-day window to correct a first violation that carries no danger, and, from 2027, a presumption of innocence under which only a court can establish an entrepreneur’s liability. He put numbers on the problem he was solving: 51 state agencies currently impose financial penalties, and of 5,000 businesses analysed, more than half were tax-inspected 2 or 3 times a year and a fifth 4 times or more.
The calendar in the announcements does its own talking.
The moratorium covers small-business inspections unrelated to risks to human health or to other entrepreneurs’ interests, and runs 3 years. Advance payments for energy fall to 15% for business, by the government’s account of the same event. Each relief so far exists as an announcement. Between an announcement and a rule stands an instrument, a decree or an amendment with a number and a date, and for Tuesday’s specifics no such instrument had appeared in the legal databases read on Wednesday morning.
The calendar in the announcements does its own talking. In the telling, the fine cut is immediate; the presumption of innocence, the deepest change offered, is dated 2027. The moratorium’s carve-outs, health risk and harm to other entrepreneurs, are wide enough to drive an inspection through if an agency wants one. And the signature that businesses with foreign counsel are actually waiting for, on the constitutional law on Enterprise Uzbekistan the Senate approved in early August with English-law elements to 2100, has yet to appear among the signed acts in the same databases.
What was promised is a quieter state. What is signed is a promise to be quiet, in principle. The gap between the two is measured in instruments, and Tashkent can close it any week it chooses.