The upper house approved the law on 7 August. Reports of the presidential signature landed on Thursday in three Uzbek outlets; none named the day it was signed or a law number.
What the coverage describes is a special jurisdiction for software, AI, cloud computing, R&D, digital content and outsourcing. Residents pay zero profit tax and zero VAT on export activity, foreign employees pay no tax on dividends, and 3-year visas are issued at consulates, at airports or in-country.
A guarantee that long is also a confession about the jurisdiction next door.
Two features separate this from an ordinary tech park. Disputes go to a Tashkent International Commercial Court applying English and Welsh common law, and the whole regime is guaranteed to the year 2100.
The region has been here before. Kazakhstan opened the AIFC on English law in 2018, Tajikistan's TIFC entered into force on 25 July, and Kyrgyzstan is chartering its own zone at Tamchy. Uzbekistan arrives last and promises the longest horizon: 74 years, a span longer than the Soviet Union lasted.
The length is the argument. An investor who distrusts local courts is offered a clock instead: whatever happens to Uzbek politics, the enclave's rules are supposed to outlive it. A guarantee that long is also a confession about the jurisdiction next door. The ordinary Uzbekistan keeps the courts, the taxes and the exits that the enclave suspends.
The test now is paperwork. Implementing acts, the court's rules, the sandbox procedure and a published number would turn the signature into an institution. The reports carry none of them yet.