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US, Korean and Chinese companies eye UzAuto Motors as Navoiazot’s pre-sale clean-up begins

Companies from the United States, South Korea and China have shown interest in buying UzAuto Motors, the director of Uzbekistan’s State Assets Management Agency Sohibjon Murodov said at a press conference on Thursday, adding that the carmaker goes to open international tender whoever asks. Navoiazot’s financial recovery has begun, and Paynet’s sale went by a pre-emptive right, he said, by Spot.

By CAW Staff9 October 2026
A car body under a pale dust sheet alone on an empty assembly line, one amber work lamp lit beside it.

The privatisation of UzAuto Motors began about two years ago, and last year the agency hired Alvarez and Marsal by competition for an international audit and the preparation of the company, Murodov said, as Spot reported at 20:41 Tashkent time. If a company says today that it wants to buy, that does not mean it will be sold to that company, and there can be no talk of it, he said, naming American, South Korean and Chinese interest and asking the press to carry that to everyone who follows the sale. A declared wish to buy is not a sale, the agency’s head said of the carmaker, in the week it explained two sales made without an announcement.

Next come a consultant to organise the tender, an international valuation and due diligence, then an announcement through international channels and the stages of bids. The offer covers 99.7 per cent of UzAuto Motors and all of UzAuto Motors Powertrain, by Spot’s context, with the General Motors agreement of October 2017 running out in 2027.

A declared wish to buy is not a sale, the agency’s head said of the carmaker, in the week it explained two sales made without an announcement.

Navoiazot’s pre-privatisation work and financial recovery have started, with several non-core assets to be taken off the balance sheet to form a clean asset before the next stage is considered, Murodov said at the same conference, by Spot at 21:38, and a chemical cluster is planned around the plant. A presidential decree of April 2025 listed the state’s 75 per cent stake for sale on international markets on a schedule set by the state privatisation commission.

On Paynet the agency spoke for the first time about a sale made without a public announcement. One of the methods directly provided by law was used, the pre-emptive right of the company’s other participants to buy a share under the law on limited liability companies, Murodov said, by Spot at 20:25. On Wednesday he had told Daryo that there was no covert privatisation in the 2023 sale of the Chinaz refinery and the UNG Petro filling-station chain for 453 billion sums, as Spot reported at 16:42 that day, and the carmaker is the asset the agency now promises to sell in the open.

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