TASHKENT

Uzbekistan is set to provide projects of foreign and domestic investors worth more than $18 million with external engineering and communication networks at the expense of the state budget in a move to attract foreign investors and encourage domestic entrepreneurs.

The resolution signed by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev tasks the government to bring infrastructure networks, including gas and electricity to projects sites of the investors, whose own funds in an enterprise should be at least 25 percent, from October 1.

The decision comes following the president’s video conference meeting with nearly 3,000 domestic entrepreneurs, who have raised infrastructure problems as the main obstacle to launch or expand their business.

The state will be fully responsible for electricity, natural gas, water supply and road infrastructure for projects worth more than $18 million, Mirziyoyev said at a meeting with businessmen.

Previously this privilege was extended only to projects of foreign investors in the amount of more than $50 million.

The resource-rich Central Asian nation of 34 million had been led by Mirziyoyev, who took over in late 2016 following the death of veteran leader Islam Karimov, who had run Uzbekistan with an iron fist for 27 years.

Since 2016, Mirziyoyev unveiled an ambitious economic reform programme, opened up the country to foreign trade and investment, scrapped monetary and other administrative burdens for business. Uzbekistan has also set up a special judicial panel for foreign investors under the country’s Supreme Court to better protect their interests and created an Anti-Corruption Committee.

Uzbekistan plans to create an additional 200 industrial zones throughout the country in the next two years and the government took the responsibility for the provision of external communications. It is expected that the state budget would allocate more than $180 million in 2021 for these purposes.

Over the past five years, the number of entrepreneurs has increased by 25 percent thus leading to raised electricity consumption by 30 percent, the president said.

Mirziyoyev also prioritised reforming the country’s energy system by opening up it to foreign investors offering public-private partnership in the power sector and promised to create all necessary conditions by 2025 that private investors would be able to produce up to 50 percent of the country’s electricity.