Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan drafts a 30% heating rise from 1 November and a million soums for the poorest
Uzbekistan has published two drafts for public comment, a cabinet resolution on tariffs and a presidential decree on social support, that set the terms of its move to market energy prices. Heating and hot water rise about 30% from 1 November, with Tashkent’s heating tariff at 314 soums per square metre a day. Families in the social registry get a one-off 1 million soums in November.
Rubio brings 200 business leaders to Samarkand as the Graham act’s 30-day deadline arrives
Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be in Samarkand between 17 and 22 October for the C5+1 ministerial, bilateral meetings with all five governments and a delegation of more than 200 business leaders, the State Department said on 13 October. Sunday 18 October is the thirtieth day of the Graham act, the deadline it sets for the president’s first duties on the largest buyers of Russian oil and gas.
Tashkent puts a former prosecutor in charge of defence and fills the Syrdarya seat
Shavkat Mirziyoyev appointed major general Botir Kudratkhodjaev defence minister on Monday, after the Legislative Chamber approved him the same day, replacing lieutenant general Shukhrat Khalmukhamedov, who had held the post since November 2024. A second decree made Doniyor Kadirov acting governor of Syrdarya region, the seat Erkinjon Turdimov left last week for the education and science ministry.
The IMF slows seven of nine regional economies in 2026 and lifts Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan
The IMF’s October World Economic Outlook, published on Tuesday, has growth slowing this year in seven of the nine economies CAW covers, with Kyrgyzstan still the fastest at 9% and Azerbaijan the slowest at 1.7%. Uzbekistan edges up to 7.8% and Azerbaijan gains too, from 1.4%. World growth slows to 3.1% in 2026 and recovers to 3.4% in 2027, the Fund says.
Mirziyoyev moves the ministries to New Tashkent, where entrepreneurs have 94 hectares
Shavkat Mirziyoyev told the prime minister on Monday to start moving the remaining ministries and state bodies to New Tashkent, three years into a project that has absorbed more than $2 billion from all sources, with the state paying for most of the 1,000 hectares under construction. Entrepreneurs have been allotted 94 hectares, the president said, and private business is being drawn in more slowly than the opportunities allow.
Uzbekistan’s reserves fall $5.5 billion in September as its gold is marked down
The Central Bank of Uzbekistan held $66.58 billion in reserves on 1 October, $5.54 billion or 7.7% less than a month earlier, Spot reported on Friday from the bank’s data. Gold in the vaults was valued at $60.08 billion, down $4.83 billion, while the physical stock rose to 14.34 million ounces from 14.11 million. The fall is a revaluation.
Tashkent names a first deputy prime minister to run the new education and science ministry
Erkinjon Turdimov, governor of Syrdarya region since January 2025, was appointed by presidential decree on Friday as first deputy prime minister and minister of education and science, Gazeta.uz reported at 19:16. The post is new in the cabinet’s structure, created alongside the ministry that merged school and higher education this month. A secretariat for education, science and health answers to Saida Mirziyoyeva.
CIS leaders sign 15 documents at Avaza and Azerbaijan is absent from the memory statement
Azerbaijan is not among the eight signatories of the statement on historical memory adopted at Avaza on Friday, by the Kremlin’s text, one of 15 documents signed as the Commonwealth’s 35th-anniversary council handed the chair to Uzbekistan from 1 January and heard Mirziyoyev invite the leaders to Bukhara next year and Aliyev offer to chair in 2028. Iran’s president sat in for the first time.
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.
Six leaders sign two documents at Avaza as Tokayev counts 200 initiatives and few results
The eighth consultative meeting of Central Asia’s heads of state, the first with Azerbaijan as a full member, closed on Thursday with a joint statement and a decision on its own rules, and handed the 2027 chair to Baku. Tokayev told the five that more than 200 initiatives have been raised since 2018 and only a small part carried out, while Putin, Pezeshkian and Lukashenko landed for Friday’s CIS summit.
Four of the commission’s five members set the Syr Darya’s winter regime at Avaza
The Interstate Coordination Water Commission’s 95th session agreed water-withdrawal volumes and reservoir regimes for the 2026 to 2027 non-growing season on Wednesday, after Shardara received 3.69 billion cubic metres in the growing season, 840 million above forecast, by Kazakhstan’s water ministry as Kazinform carried it. The Turkmen chair’s readout and the Kazakh one name four delegations, and neither names Kyrgyzstan.
Avaza’s first day ends with four CIS decisions and no word on the Caspian ministers
The CIS foreign ministers signed four documents at Avaza on Wednesday, among them a decision making 2029 the Commonwealth’s transport year, and fixed their next council for Bishkek in April 2027. Listed for the same day in the host’s programme, the Caspian states’ ministers had no readout on Turkmenistan’s state portal, TDH, the foreign ministry’s site or News Central Asia by Thursday morning as the presidents landed.
The World Bank lifts Kyrgyzstan to 9.6% and Georgia to 7% as the region slows to 2.2%
Growth in Europe and Central Asia is likely to slow to 2.2% in 2026 from 2.6% in 2025, the World Bank said in its Economic Update released in Washington on 6 October, with Central Asia the fastest subregion at 5.8%, Kyrgyzstan at 9.6% and Uzbekistan at 7.9%. Georgia’s forecast rises to 7% from the 5% of April, by Georgian press accounts of the same update.
Uzbekneftegaz expects its gas output to fall 9.5% this year, to 22.8 billion cubic metres
Uzbekneftegaz and its subsidiaries produced about 17 billion cubic metres of gas in January to September and expect 22.8 billion for the year, 9.5% less than the 25.2 billion of 2025, Sukhrob Khamraev, the company’s first deputy chairman for finance, said in an interview with the O’zbekiston 24 channel reported by the business site Spot on Tuesday evening. Monday’s presidential readout printed no output figure.
Uzbekistan’s inflation rises to 6.4% in September while Georgia’s holds at 5.6%
Consumer prices in Uzbekistan rose 6.4% in the year to September, 0.7% in the month and 4.2% since December, the statistics committee’s release of 5 October shows, against 8.0% a year earlier. In Georgia annual inflation stayed at 5.6% in September, unchanged from August, with transport up 18.7% on fuel, Geostat said on 2 October.
Moscow’s Afghanistan format ends with no statement as Overchuk reports trade up 2.5 times
The eighth round of the Moscow format consultations on Afghanistan ended on Monday without a final statement because the Afghan and Pakistani delegations could not agree a text, Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday, with the special envoys of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan at the table. Deputy prime minister Alexei Overchuk told foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi the same morning that trade had grown 2.5 times in seven months.
Mirziyoyev hears of five gas discoveries and 80 wells as Uzbekistan’s output keeps falling
Uzbekistan has discovered five gas fields and drilled 80 wells this year, with 40 more due in the fourth quarter and 3D seismic work to reach five times last year’s volume, the presidential press service said after Mirziyoyev reviewed the sector’s large projects on 5 October. The readout prints no output figure, no sum and no partner’s name. Gas output was 16.3% lower in January to August.
Avaza’s week has a Caspian summit in one portal post and none in the programme
Turkmenistan’s state portal, turkmenistan.gov.tm, gives two accounts of the 3 days that open in Avaza on Wednesday. Its programme has the Caspian ministers on 7 October, the heads of state of Central Asia and Azerbaijan on 8 October and the CIS council on 9 October. Its post on Tokayev’s attendance adds a Caspian Ecological Summit, dated 9 October by an Ashgabat outlet that expects Putin and Pezeshkian.
Uzbekistan folds two ministries into one for education and science
A decree of 3 October merges the Ministry of Preschool and School Education and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation into a Ministry of Education and Science, and gives the Cabinet a week to organise it. That evening economic adviser Obid Khakimov became deputy head of the presidential administration for education reform, and on Sunday businessman Zafar Khashimov was named to lead a working group on it.
Uzbekistan imported $1.21 billion of gas in 8 months and sold $322 million
Uzbekistan’s gas imports were worth $1.21 billion in January to August, 15.2% more than a year earlier, while its gas exports fell 34.8% to $322.3 million, by National Statistics Committee figures published on 1 October. The bill is almost 4 times the receipts, and on Thursday the US Trade Representative faces its first deadline under the act aimed at the 5 largest importers of Russian gas.