TASHKENT

Uzbekistan has formed a new Strategic Development Agency to oversee activities related to attracting foreign investment and the implementation of investment projects in key sectors of the country’s economy.

One of the main tasks of the agency is “to study strategic issues of attracting investments and implementing projects in the context of industries and regions, identifying promising industries and areas of investment activity,” Uzbekistan’s Justice Ministry said, citing a presidential decree.

According to the decree, an accelerator of strategic initiatives will be formed under the agency in order to quickly and efficiently solve the most pressing problems in the field of increasing investment activity.

The agency’s director will be appointed and dismissed by the president, who will also chair the agency’s Council.

Uzbekistan has been taking steps to make the Central Asian nation attractive to foreign investors, reforming its once centralised economy after more than two decades of economic isolation.

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has made attracting foreign investors one of his top priorities in measures that have included liberalising the country’s foreign exchange market and modernising business practices, cutting down on the soviet-era bureaucracy that still holds many of the country’s companies back.

Earlier this month, the country, in cooperation with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), produced a report providing a comprehensive outline of the major costs involved in investing in the country, such as enterprise registration, labour costs, taxes and tax incentives, licensing, foreign trade procedures, customs payments and preferences, business services, logistics and other relevant business information, down to social services costs.

It includes a general guide to foreign trade, highlighting features such as Uzbekistan’s  State Customs Committee’s united automated information system, as well as listing most favoured nation rules and countries which effectively have Free Trade Agreements with Uzbekistan.