Uzbekistan
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.
Karakalpakstan shuts kindergartens as Uzbekistan braces for +46
Uzhydromet has issued an extreme heat warning for 13 to 17 July, with temperatures up to +44 to +46 and dust storms in places. In Karakalpakstan, the country’s driest region, cities and districts began suspending kindergartens on sanitary officials’ orders. The heat is a weather story for a week and an infrastructure story for longer.
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.
Uzbekistan spent $725 million importing gas in five months as its own output slid
Uzbekistan's natural-gas imports rose 84% year on year to $724.7 million in January to May, the state statistics committee reported, while its gas exports to China fell. A country that shipped gas abroad a decade ago now buys it to keep the lights on.
Uzbekistan’s cargo boom is outgrowing its border posts
Cargo turnover grew 43% in the first half of 2026 and transit traffic 35%, the transport minister and customs chief reported on state television. The bottleneck has moved to the border, where the president wants throughput doubled.
Mirziyoyev ends a 23-year pause in Tbilisi, and Georgia gains a second Central Asian partner
The first Uzbek state visit to Georgia since 2003 brought a declaration of strategic partnership, Georgia’s highest state award and a package of agreements. Kazakhstan signed its own strategic partnership with Tbilisi three days earlier. The western gate of the Middle Corridor is signing up its shippers.
Uzbekistan’s petrol price hits a record as the regional fuel squeeze spreads
AI-92 petrol on Uzbekistan’s commodity exchange reached 13.9 million soums a ton on 29 June, about $1,160 and the highest level ever recorded. The jump lands while Russia restricts fuel exports, Kazakhstan’s biggest refinery sits in maintenance, and Uzbekistan’s own output keeps falling.
Central Asia’s shortcut to the sea runs through a war
Landlocked Central Asia wants a fast route to the ocean through Afghanistan and Pakistan. The war between them has shut that door for now, and it is pushing Afghanistan’s own trade north into Central Asia instead. Both shifts redraw the region’s map of dependence.
China gives Central Asia eyes in the sky for its disasters. The data lands in Xinjiang
China and three Central Asian states agreed last week to build a shared constellation of satellites to watch for earthquakes, landslides and the floods that come off melting glaciers. The region needs the warning. The satellites’ data will be processed at a computing centre in Xinjiang.