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.
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.
The Ministry of Finance and UNDP convened an international forum in Tashkent on 30 August 2022 to assess the expansion of participatory budgeting, after the first 2022 cycle saw 6.7 million citizens vote on more than 69,000 proposals, resulting in 1.2 trillion soums allocated to 2,354 winning projects from district and city budgets.
A third of the country’s teachers have been rated unsatisfactory in their own subjects, base salaries remain well below a presidential pledge, and documented incidents of officials publicly humiliating educators have accelerated a flight from the profession that is hollowing out public schooling.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has signed six major energy project agreements totalling $4.7 billion and declared that reducing losses in the electricity grid will now be a central investment priority alongside launching new generation capacity.
The US dollar climbed above 12,000 sums on October 15 for the first time since late July, closing at 12,011.65 sums after an eight-day consecutive rally that reversed a prolonged decline stretching back to a three-year low recorded in September.
A Visa survey of 249 Uzbek small and medium businesses finds digital payment adoption is now widespread, but only 37% of firms have integrated those payments with broader operational tools — a gap that costs businesses time and limits their access to tailored financial services.
A protocol from an extraordinary general meeting of UzPost shareholders has confirmed that the national postal operator’s 92.9% state stake was transferred to a Wildberries subsidiary under trust management — a fact the head of the State Assets Management Agency publicly denied as recently as October 8.
Founded in Uzbekistan in 2015, Bellissimo Pizza has moved from 100 domestic locations to an 11-branch footprint in Kazakhstan within a single year, acquiring the assets of a local Papa John’s franchisee and targeting 200 restaurants across the country by 2030.
Safia, one of Uzbekistan’s largest confectionery chains, plans to grow its Kazakhstan network from 11 to 25 branches by the end of this year, with each new location requiring between $100,000 and $150,000 in capital. Shymkent operations are already profitable; Almaty is expected to reach break-even before year-end.
