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Uzbekistan’s Customs Committee resumed the clearance of mobile phones at Tashkent airport on 11 November, ending a suspension it had imposed on the grounds that customs officers lacked the specialist knowledge needed to verify whether IMEI codes had been forged — a justification that drew immediate public criticism.
At a press conference the same day, the committee’s department head Farhod Olimjonov set out the scale of the problem the agency said it was trying to address. Legal imports of mobile devices have surged from 12,000 handsets in all of 2024 to 533,000 in the months elapsed so far this year. Of those, 452,000 were cleared through cargo customs declarations, with the remainder brought in by individual travellers under passenger import orders.
What Customs Said It Cannot Do
Olimjonov argued that confirming whether IMEI 1 and IMEI 2 codes belong to the same device — and whether either code has previously been involved in a network incident — requires expertise and information systems that customs offices do not currently possess. He said verifying IMEI authenticity falls outside the core statutory mandate of customs authorities, which is to check the characteristics of goods that affect the calculation of duties and fees, not to police telecommunications identifiers.
To fill that gap, the committee said it had begun coordinating with relevant ministries and agencies and was bringing in specialists to inspect devices carried by individuals and legal entities assessed as high-risk — meaning those suspected of exploiting duty-free personal import allowances to avoid customs payments. Olimjonov was explicit that the measures do not cancel or restrict the duty-free thresholds that apply to ordinary travellers.
Criticism and the Resumption
The suspension drew sharp criticism before it was lifted. Blogger Qobil Xidirov argued publicly that when problems arise with a process, the answer is not to halt or obstruct it and leave people stranded; the committee’s explanation did not satisfy those who had been caught in the backlog.
Alongside the resumption announcement, Olimjonov pointed to a broader simplification effort already under way. A mobile application launched in August 2026 now handles more than 70 percent of electronic declarations without human intervention, cutting average processing time from roughly 20 minutes to under one minute, he said.
The episode illustrates a tension running through Uzbekistan’s rapid liberalisation of phone imports: as volumes grow fortyfold in a single year, the infrastructure for verifying the legitimacy of devices has not kept pace, leaving customs authorities caught between fraud-prevention obligations they say they cannot technically fulfil and a public expectation of uninterrupted service.