Insights
Short daily briefs on what is moving in Uzbekistan's economy — and what it means for investors. Full analyses are available to clients.
Original analysis by the Oxus Advisory research desk. Written in English and Russian.
Uzbekistan's registry of companies with foreign capital crossed 20,000 in June, with China the largest single source and Pakistani-founded firms nearly doubling year on year. The investor base is not only deepening but diversifying beyond the traditional players. For new entrants, the practical consequence is competition for credible local partners — the best ones are being signed up now.
Samarkand-based Samauto is preparing new bus and electric-bus models with Turkey's Anadolu Isuzu, pairing Japanese and German drivetrain components with local assembly. The deal extends Uzbekistan's automotive localization story beyond passenger cars into commercial vehicles. Component suppliers should read this as a signal: procurement pipelines for public-transport electrification are forming now.
More than 90% of repeat business inspections are conducted by just two bodies — the Tax Committee and the Ministry of Emergency Situations — and nearly a quarter of affected companies are in Tashkent. The audit surface is narrower than many entrants fear, which makes it manageable: tax records and fire-and-safety compliance deserve disproportionate preparation.
Textile and knitwear producers had nearly 85 billion soum of electricity debt written off after the business ombudsman secured application of tariff benefits introduced in 2023. Beyond the immediate margin relief, the episode shows the ombudsman channel producing concrete results. Energy-intensive investors should map which incentives exist on paper — and budget the effort to make them real.
New rules define how bonded warehouses will operate: a minimum footprint of 15,000 square meters and an operator contract with a marketplace. The scale threshold effectively reserves the segment for institutional capital rather than small operators. For investors, cross-border retail infrastructure just became a defined, regulated asset class in Uzbekistan.
Hamkorbank and its brokerage arm joined the capital-market regulatory sandbox with plans to issue foreign-currency bonds. A working sandbox lowers the cost of experimenting with new instruments — exactly how deeper local markets get built. Treasurers and funds should watch whether FX corporate paper becomes a repeatable financing route rather than a one-off.
Full analyses are available to clients.
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