Uzbekistan
Tashkent puts an AI on 106,000 energy workers
A day after the energy minister was dismissed, Uzbekistan has a new centre monitoring the whole sector workforce against ten indicators. The loss figures behind the decision came out with it.
Kabul and Tashkent sign 22 documents worth $200 million
This morning the desk asked which goods would appear when the paperwork did. Cotton appeared first, at 10,000 tonnes on trial with an offer for 100,000 more.
Tashkent sacks its energy minister, and four utilities go on probation
Jurabek Mirzamahmudov was released on Monday. Mirziyoyev located the failure in management of the system and gave the heads of four state energy companies until the end of the year.
Nowhere to put a bad week
The region has spent a decade building capacity to move things and almost nothing to hold them. July is showing what that costs.
Tashkent sends a 300-strong business delegation to Kabul
Uzbekistan’s deputy prime minister spent the weekend in Kabul with a delegation and a tariff offer. The stated target is $5 billion of trade.
Uzbekistan signs its own commercial court into law
President Mirziyoyev has signed the constitutional law on the Tashkent International Financial Centre, which takes effect on 25 July. It creates a special jurisdiction with its own regulation and its own court: the Tashkent International Commercial Court, with a first instance and an appeal chamber, for commercial, corporate and financial disputes inside the centre.
Tashkent audits $213 billion of promises
President Mirziyoyev dismissed Uzbekistan’s ambassador to Belarus this week for what the readout called an indifferent attitude to investment and foreign trade, and told the head of his administration, Saida Mirziyoyeva, to assess every mission’s economic diplomacy. His own accounting framed it: 52 top-level visits have produced agreements on 1,617 investment projects worth $213 billion.
Moscow starts Uzbekistan up the produce ladder
Rosselkhoznadzor will restrict imports from five Uzbek exporters from 23 July, citing phytosanitary violations: cabbage, onions, herbs, beetroot, tomatoes and grapes. In May the same regulator suspended ten Uzbek exporters. Armenia climbed this ladder rung by rung this spring, to a full ban in June.
The heat breaks, and the bill arrives in mud
Bishkek logged 43.5 degrees on Sunday, its third daily record in a row, after the hottest 17 and 18 July in observation history; Uzbekistan’s grid ran five record days. From Tuesday both hydromets forecast the break, and both have posted mudflow warnings for the mountain belts, Kyrgyzstan’s through 25 July, Uzbekistan’s through the 24th. Summer in the region now alternates between two infrastructure tests, and there is no season between them.
Uzbekistan’s grid runs a fifth record day
Daily consumption hit 293.4 million kilowatt-hours on 17 July, 7.6% above last summer’s maximum, and the energy ministry counted five consecutive record days through the weekend. On Monday four Tashkent districts were warned of possible short outages; relief arrives with the heat easing from Tuesday.
Tashkent changes the man who guards the president
By decree on 18 July, President Mirziyoyev appointed Rustam Juraev chairman of the State Security Service of the president and promoted him to lieutenant general. Alisher Usmanov, a career officer who shares his name with the Russian-Uzbek billionaire, was released from the post. The announcements gave no reason.
Uzbekistan’s heat emergency goes national
What began as kindergarten closures in Karakalpakstan is now a country-wide footing: all regions have stepped up the watering of trees and greenery on the ecology committee’s orders, closures have spread to Khorezm and parts of Navoi, and Surkhandarya has restricted daytime truck movement. The +44 to +46 warning runs through Friday, and the grid has already set its record.
Uzbekistan starts rolling the sheet steel it has always imported
On Monday Mirziyoyev pushed the button on an $839 million casting-and-rolling complex at Uzmetkombinat in Bekabad, the country’s first production of hot-rolled sheet. Two days later, in the middle of a +44 to +46 heat warning, the national grid set a consumption record. The steel week tells one story from both ends: Central Asia’s industrial ambitions are arriving faster than the systems meant to feed them.
Uzbekistan carves out a constitutional enclave for foreign capital
Mirziyoyev has signed the constitutional law on the Tashkent International Financial Center: a district of the capital where English common law applies, a court can seat foreign judges, the regulator’s acts outrank national legislation, and tax exemptions run to 2076. It is the region’s third English-law enclave, and the first anchored in a constitution’s own tier of law.
Uzbekistan’s central bank pushes back on the P2P reporting draft
The Central Bank has formally objected, on bank-secrecy grounds, to the draft that would make banks report large personal transfers to the tax authorities. The State Tax Committee answered over the weekend: no mass control of personal transfers is planned, and P2P transfers between individuals are not in themselves taxable. The comment period is closed and the decision now sits inside the government.
The Syr Darya treaty is now law in both capitals
Tokayev has signed the law ratifying Kazakhstan’s agreement with Uzbekistan on joint management of transboundary waters, completing a process Tashkent finished in March. The two states that share the river’s lower course now have a standing commission, and a basin that has run on annual improvisation gets its first permanent bilateral machine.
Tashkent moves to flag large personal transfers, reviving a fight it lost before
A draft resolution would require banks to report individuals whose cards take in large monthly transfers from people other than close relatives. The State Tax Committee calls it a technical clean-up of rules that already exist. Its critics read it as a government decree reopening access to financial data a previous reform round had closed.
Lukashenko asks Uzbekistan for a door into markets Belarus can't reach alone
Shavkat Mirziyoyev is in Minsk on a two-day state visit that closes today with a strategic-partnership declaration and roughly twenty agreements. Buried in Alexander Lukashenko's own remarks is the real ask: help from Tashkent to reach third countries close to Uzbekistan. For a state locked out of Western markets since 2020, that request says more than any communique.
Uzbekistan's first census since 1989 finds 810,000 people its estimates missed
Uzbekistan's first full census since Soviet times puts the population at 39 million, some 810,000 above the running estimate, a gap the size of a large city. The new baseline resets the numbers behind schools, water, farmland and the labour force. For the region's largest young society, the recount is a planning shock.