Administrative Reform
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev announced on 16 October the creation of an Investors’ Council for the fuel and energy sector, placing his daughter and Head of the Presidential Administration, Saida Mirziyoyeva, at its helm. The president cited bureaucracy and corruption as the explicit reasons for the new body.
British Ambassador Timothy Smart is departing Tashkent after three years, leaving behind a bilateral trade relationship that expanded nearly eightfold, a new international commercial court in the works, and deepened security ties — with a high-level Uzbek delegation to London still to come.
A visually impaired Tashkent resident was denied a routine power of attorney on July 24 because a 2019 Ministry of Justice regulation prohibits the facsimile signatures that national disability law explicitly authorises. The Tashkent City Department of Justice defended the refusal, citing a Cabinet of Ministers resolution that requires a specialist of a profession that does not officially exist.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has announced the creation of an Investors’ Council for the fuel and energy sector, appointing Saida Mirziyoyeva, head of the Presidential Administration, to lead the body. The council is designed to resolve persistent administrative bottlenecks — from land allocation to grid connections — that have slowed major energy infrastructure projects.
Six energy agreements worth US$4.7 billion were signed at an investor dialogue chaired by President Mirziyoyev, adding 3,000 MW of generation and 400 MW of storage capacity. A new Investors’ Council will be chaired by Presidential Administration head Saida Mirziyoyeva, while tenders for a further 2,200 MW of solar and wind capacity are imminent.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has announced a new Investors’ Council for the fuel and energy sector, to be led by Saida Mirziyoyeva, head of the Presidential Administration, after international energy companies cited persistent bureaucratic obstacles to project delivery.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed legislation imposing life imprisonment for sexual violence against children under 14, as the government simultaneously announced a 30% rise in heating tariffs, dismissed the defense minister, reshuffled four Tashkent district governors, and arrested a deputy district governor for a $25,000 bribe.
Competition Committee Found Anti-Competitive Norms in Nearly Half of All Draft Laws Reviewed in 2025
The Competition Committee reviewed 878 draft regulatory acts submitted through the government’s unified legislative portal in 2025 and found that 425 — nearly half — contained provisions contradicting competition law. The rate was highest for Presidential-level acts, where 147 of 239 drafts, or 61.5%, were flagged.
The Migration Agency under the Cabinet of Ministers has urged Uzbek citizens engaged in temporary labor activity in Russia to regularize their legal status no later than September 10, 2025, following a decree by the President of the Russian Federation extending the original deadline.
An expanded presidential meeting on October 27 set a GDP target of $135 billion and ordered a new budget monitoring system for 22 ministries and local administrations, as the economy grew 7.6% in the first nine months of the year — well ahead of forecast.
A joint study by UNDP and the Anti-Corruption Agency, presented at a Tashkent roundtable on 25 May 2026, found that healthcare and education are the sectors where women are most exposed to corruption, while nearly 70% of respondents linked informal social practices to the spread of corrupt behaviour.
A regional round table convened in Tashkent on 29 November 2022 brought together police, prosecutors and legal educators from four Central Asian countries to examine how corruption and institutional shortcomings obstruct the protection of women and girls from violence.
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