Half of Uzbekistan’s 33,000 Standards Are Outdated, MPs Warn in WTO Accession Alert

Nearly half of Uzbekistan’s more than 33,000 active technical standards are outdated or fail to meet international requirements — a regulatory gap that lawmakers say is becoming a direct obstacle to the country’s bid to join the World Trade Organization. The Legislative Chamber voted on 10 November to send a formal parliamentary inquiry to the head of the Agency for Technical Regulation under the Cabinet of Ministers.

The inquiry is addressed to Ansabkhon Zokirov, the agency’s director, and was presented to the chamber by MP Nodira Janibekova. She told lawmakers that despite a series of reforms in technical regulation, standardisation, metrology and conformity assessment, a cluster of serious problems remained unresolved.

A Standards Database That Has Not Kept Pace

Janibekova was direct about the scale of the problem. “The existing standards database is outdated. Nearly 50% of the more than 33,000 standards currently in force are outdated or do not meet international requirements,” she said. She connected that figure explicitly to WTO membership, noting that alignment with international technical requirements is among the core conditions for accession. “This situation is becoming a serious obstacle to the process of accession to the World Trade Organization,” she said.

Beyond the standards backlog, the inquiry covers three further areas of concern: insufficient digitisation of regulatory procedures, a lack of transparency in the agency’s work, and what Janibekova described as inadequately organised efforts to identify and eliminate corruption risks. “Efforts to identify and eliminate corruption risks have not been fully organised,” she told the chamber, adding that accelerating the digitisation of technical regulation processes was also urgent.

What Happens Next

The parliamentary inquiry covers the effectiveness of public administration in technical regulation across all four of those areas. The specific questions put to Zokirov were not read aloud during the session. Under Article 32 of the Law on the Regulations of the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis, officials of state bodies are required to provide written responses to parliamentary inquiries within ten days of receipt, unless a different deadline has been set. Lawmakers voted in favour of sending the inquiry after Janibekova’s presentation.

Uzbekistan has been pursuing WTO membership for years, and technical regulation — the system of standards, testing and certification that governs traded goods — is one of the more demanding chapters of any accession negotiation. A finding that roughly half the country’s standards stock does not meet international benchmarks gives concrete shape to a challenge that has often been discussed in general terms.