January 21, 2020
More than tripled foreign investments attracted by Uzbekistan in 2019, the press service of the Ministry of Investments and Foreign Trade of the republic said.
According to the agency, the total volume of foreign investment and loans amounted to $ 13.3 billion, including foreign direct investment - $ 9.3 billion and funds from international financial institutions - $ 4 billion. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)report, the world foreign direct investment volume has been declining for the third year in a row, reaching the lowest level that was observed immediately after the global financial crisis. At the end of 2018, this indicator decreased by 19% (in 2017, 16%).
Meanwhile, according to the UNCTAD report, positive trends were observed in developing countries, especially in Asia, where the volume of foreign investment grew by 5%. Moreover, while in the countries of Central Asia the growth in foreign investment amounted to an average of 8-10%, then in Uzbekistan this indicator compared to the indicators of 2018 ($ 2.9 billion, of which $ 1.6 billion in fixed assets) grew by 3.2 times ($ 9.3 billion, of which $ 6.6 billion in fixed assets), which provided the Republic with leadership in terms of growth rate among the countries of the region. The main foreign investors were China, Russia and Germany, the ministry said. At the same time, the total number of investing countries in the economy of Uzbekistan exceeded the mark of 50, due to which the share of the largest investing countries fell to 34% of the total volume of attracted foreign direct investment and loans.
According to the Ministry of Investment, an active growth in attracting foreign direct investment was observed in the industries such as, electrotechnical (7.5 times), metallurgical (4.6 times), textile (2.5 times), leather and footwear (2.1 times) and oil and gas ( 2 times) .
In 2020, the republic plans to attract $ 7.1 billion of foreign direct investment and $ 2.7 billion as classified as foreign investment and loans under the state guarantee.
This year, it is planned to commission more than 2 thousand social, infrastructural and industrial facilities, listed as 206 large new production facilities, 240 regional production facilities, 1.6 thousand social and infrastructural facilities.
