The Ministry of Investment, Industry and Trade published its account of the package overnight on Telegram, and Spot carried it at 02:27 Tashkent time. “Uzbekistan and the United States signed a package of 54 agreements in trade, investment and technological cooperation,” the ministry wrote, in Spot’s rendering, and “the implementation of the agreements provides for the development of $12 billion.” The sectors it lists are industry, transport and energy infrastructure, critical minerals, finance, digital technologies, agriculture, health and education. Neither the ministry nor the presidency says over what period the $12 billion is to be spent or whether it counts investment, contract value or financing.
The named companies come in four groups. GE Aerospace is to supply engines for new Uzbekistan Airways aircraft, and Wabtec’s cooperation “is aimed at the localisation of railway equipment and components”, a day after Spot reported that Wabtec could supply locomotives with American financing. One sum covers the whole package, and no document on the list carries its own.
The second group is finance. The agreements with Franklin Templeton, Oppenheimer & Co., Citigroup and BlackRock “concern the entry of national companies to international capital markets, the attraction of institutional investors and the financing of infrastructure projects”, the ministry says. Franklin Templeton manages the Uzbek National Investment Fund, whose $604 million London listing in May CAW carried as the country’s first global share offering, and BlackRock is helping design the Tashkent International Financial Centre, the Baku agency Trend reported on 25 September.
One sum covers the whole package, and no document on the list carries its own.
The third group is minerals: ReElement Technologies, Traxys and Trafigura, for “the study and development of deposits, technological cooperation and the supply of mineral resources”. The fourth is technology, where Amazon Leo, GE HealthCare and Valmont Industries stand for satellite communications, medical technology and agricultural efficiency.
Mirziyoyev gave the package its frame at the council’s second meeting on Monday evening. On the Uzbek side the work involved 45 ministries and agencies, he said, each American company had found a specific partner among government bodies, regional administrations and Uzbek businesses, and the next step should be a comprehensive action plan and a joint programme for trade, investment and technological cooperation to 2035. He described a move to a plug-and-play model for investors, with prepared sites, infrastructure connections and permits, and a direct investment fund ready to share risk.
The verbs differ between the two Uzbek channels. The ministry writes that the 54 agreements were signed, and the presidential press service, in Spot’s second report of the night, writes that the parties prepared “a package of 54 agreements and promising initiatives worth about $12 billion” for the meeting, which is also how Mirziyoyev put it in the State Department’s transcript: “has been put together.” The event’s moderator, in the same transcript, closed with a ceremonial exchange of documents in transportation, the chemical industry, geology and finance, without a count.
Rubio supplied the one project with a figure attached. “For the first time ever we will have an Uzbekistan manufacturing operation in the United States,” he told the council. “AKFA Group is investing $80 million in Bowling Green, Kentucky,” in the aluminium industry. He also named Boeing’s sale of 22 widebody 787s to Uzbekistan Airways last year, the Colorado School of Mines in minerals, the University of Texas at Dallas with the Samarkand Quantum Center, and small modular reactors and grid modernisation as the energy line.
Saida Mirziyoyeva, the council’s Uzbek co-chair, put the delegation at “another hundred U.S. companies” after almost 200 in June, and offered the room a name to call. “Every company here will have a name to call, and any problem you raise will reach the co-chairs personally,” she said, and asked Washington to retire the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which Rubio, she said, had called a relic of the Cold War.
Sergio Gor, the American co-chair, set three priorities for the council: infrastructure, critical minerals and “emerging industries, including aerospace and super intelligence”. Monday’s package is a new count, separate from the deals worth over $20 billion that Gor said in June the two countries’ companies had concluded in the previous year, by the Almaty business site Kapital’s report.
The ministry’s own last line is the test of the package: “the next priority will be the practical implementation of the agreements reached.” The list gives the companies and the sectors, both Uzbek channels give the count and the sum, and the first figure to check against the package is AKFA’s $80 million, the only one on the record with a town attached.