The mechanics are a staircase. The general retirement age now stands at 60 for men and 55 for women; the changes are to begin on 1 January 2027, UzDaily reported at 16:10 Tashkent time, and from 1 January 2028 the age is to rise by 3 months every year. Twelve steps of 3 months make 3 years, which is why the draft's end date is 2039.
The draft sits on SOVAZ, the government's consultation portal, with public discussion open until 30 September. It is written as a presidential decree, so the staircase would carry the president's signature.
Guarantees wrap the increase. Employers could neither dismiss nor refuse to hire a worker for being of pre-pension age. The registered unemployed would keep the right to retire 2 years early. Tax, transport and medical benefits would stay, as would preferential pensions at 50 to 55 for men and 45 to 50 for women, and access to accumulated pension savings would remain at 60 and 55.
The stated purpose, in the draft's words as UzDaily quotes them, is balance between the period of a citizen's participation in the pension system and the period of pension payment, given the growth in life expectancy.
A reform whose stated purpose is balance arrives without its balance sheet.
The design is a year old, and the draft takes its gentler variant. On 10 September 2025 the Pension Fund's executive director, Murodbek Otajonov, said the age would rise by 6 months a year, Kun.uz reported, with a 3-month variant as the softer option, and put life expectancy at 75 on the health ministry's figure; the age itself, he said, had not moved in the 32 years since the pension law was adopted.
The money behind the draft is in the ministry's own fiscal strategy for 2027 to 2029, which Gazeta.uz reported on 20 July. Pension Fund spending ran at 64 trillion soums in 2024 and 76.7 trillion in 2025, 4.2% of GDP in both years, and is projected at 86.1 trillion this year, or 4.1%. The budget transfer that fills the gap rose from 16.3 trillion soums to 20.2 trillion and is booked at 23 trillion soums for 2026, about $1.9 billion; the fund's own income this year is projected at 64.7 trillion.
The strategy names the other levers as well: 2.8 million registered self-employed, of whom about 800,000 contribute voluntarily; an earnings period in the pension formula lengthened from 5 to 20 years; a minimum service period to be raised. Over 2 years the transfer has grown 41% while spending grew 35%. The state fills more of the fund each year.
The retirement age is the one line in that ledger the ministry can move without a budget appropriation, and the staircase spreads the cost of moving it across 12 cohorts, a season at a time. What the draft does not carry, in UzDaily's account, is the sum it saves. A reform whose stated purpose is balance arrives without its balance sheet.
Unresolved: what the first year, 2027, changes before the first step of 2028; the number of pensioners on the fund; the savings the ministry projects.