The fifth Tashkent International Investment Forum closes on 18 June, its final day built around the Fourth Plenary Session of the Foreign Investors Council — the meeting where 75 major international companies operating in Uzbekistan sit down with officials over the regulatory agenda that determines whether pledges convert. More than 120 proposals on taxation, legislation and land-use were submitted ahead of the session, and officials have said a reform roadmap will be adopted before the forum ends.
The three days produced the scaffolding of a pitch rather than a single headline number. Mirziyoyev opened the plenary on 17 June with €75 billion in projects on the table and his 'doors open' framing; Germany's president arrived with a business delegation; Tajikistan set a $2 billion bilateral trade target; the Regional Alliance of Investment Councils of Central Asia and the Caucasus, co-led by the ADB and EBRD, was welcomed into the forum's architecture. The day before the opening, Uzbekistan floated its National Investment Fund on the London Stock Exchange.
Last year closed at $30.5 billion in signed agreements. This year's number is the one Tashkent is waiting to publish.
Two institutional pieces are the ones to watch past the closing ceremony. The legislation establishing the Tashkent International Financial Centre, whose legal framework draws on common-law principles, is expected before the end of June. A revised Special Economic Zones law and draft rules for alternative investment instruments, including venture capital and private equity, are also in preparation. These are the mechanisms that decide whether memoranda become operating assets, the conversion question that has run through every day of this forum.
The closing investment total had not been published by the time this pack went out and is expected later on 18 June. Last year's $30.5 billion, across more than 500 B2B and B2G meetings, is the figure this edition is measured against. The headline number will land today; the test of how much of it becomes capital will take the year until the next forum.