00:11This is a country with a young, growing population, with a lot of entrepreneurs, with a lot of dynamism.
00:17There's increasing transparency, credibility of the reform agenda, credibility of the data, and so on,
00:24and that is the thing that brings investors.
00:31Uzbekistan began changing the foundations of its economy in 2017.
00:36It liberalized the foreign exchange market, opened further to trade and investment, and
00:41gave private enterprises more room to operate.
00:45Banking and payment systems also began to modernize.
00:48Official data put year-on-year growth at 8.5% in the first half of 2026.
00:55Over the same period, investment reached approximately €24.6 billion, while exports totaled around €12.7 billion.
01:05The government says the next stage is to spread that momentum, more widely across the regions.
01:23The decade's transformation can be traced through three parts of economic life – capital, work, and everyday money.
01:30Capital is the first test how investment enters the country, reaches businesses, and becomes productive activity.
01:38Foreign direct investment rose from around €7.9 billion in 2021 to approximately €33.8 billion in 2025, according to
01:49the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
01:52Foreign exchange liberalization also widened companies' access to currency for international transactions.
02:13The financial framework has changed too.
02:17The central bank is moving towards inflation targeting, designed to make monetary policy more predictable and better equipped to respond
02:24to economic shocks.
02:26Uzbekistan Central Bank has developed a very good framework for inflation targeting.
02:32It is still in the transition period to that, because it requires a lot of reforms in many directions, but
02:40those reforms are ongoing.
02:42These reforms have changed how capital and money move through the economy.
02:46The next question is, how far that change reaches beyond financial institutions?
02:52A decade of reform cannot be judged only by investment flows or growth rate.
02:57A deeper test is whether businesses can grow, jobs become more stable, and more workers gain protections of formal employment.
03:06Reducing informal employment has therefore become another part of the government's economic program.
03:32Formal employment can provide access to pensions, social insurance, and labour protections.
03:37A labour code adopted in 2023 also introduced equal pay for work of equal value.
03:44UNDP says entrepreneurship programs have also sought to widen economic opportunities for women.
03:57Change is also visible in everyday payments.
04:00Central Bank and Asian Development Bank data shows that more than 7 in 10 adults made or received at least
04:07one digital payment in 2025, compared with 39% in 2021.
04:13Mobile banking, cards and QR codes have expanded, while cash remains part of daily life.
04:19E-Central Bank and Central Bank are doing constant reforms that are directed towards the development of the payment system.
04:27One of the lagman's projects over the last years is the creation of a single QR code, the universal QR
04:34code UZKVAR.
04:35Nearly a decade after the opening began, Pakistan's economy is more market-based, more connected to international finance and increasingly
04:43digital.
04:44The next phase is to bring those changes to more businesses, workers and households across the country.
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