Middle East and Central Asia > Uzbekistan, Republic of

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International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
The 2024 Article IV Consultation discusses that Uzbekistan’s growth momentum continues on the back of far-reaching structural reforms to liberalize its economy, favorable commodity prices, and notable increases in financial and income flows. Growth is expected to remain robust at 5.4 percent in 2024, despite the appropriate withdrawal of fiscal stimulus and slowing trading partner growth. In 2025, growth is projected to pick up to around 5½ percent. Needed increases in administered energy prices would temporarily raise inflation to 11.5 percent by end-2024. The government’s planned fiscal consolidation is appropriate and will help reduce inflation and imports while protecting the vulnerable. Further efforts are needed to broaden the tax base, modernize the tax system, improve the efficiency of public spending, and strengthen public financial management. Monetary policy should remain focused on reducing inflation to the central bank’s target and be tightened if energy price reforms spill over to core inflation and inflation expectations. Structural reforms should focus on reducing the state’s role in the economy, promoting women’s participation in the labor market, advancing decarbonization and climate adaptation initiatives, and enhancing governance and transparency, building on progress already made.
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
Uzbekistan embarked on an ambitious reform path in 2017, starting to liberalize its economy after years of state control. Incomes are still relatively low compared to other emerging economies and the role of the state is still large. Uzbekistan weathered the pandemic relatively well. Strong fundamentals, ample policy buffers, and high gold prices allowed the authorities to take strong actions to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and growth accelerated to 7.4 percent in 2021.
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
Uzbekistan embarked on an ambitious reform path in 2017, starting to liberalize its economy after years of state control. Incomes are still relatively low compared to other emerging economies and the role of the state is still large. Uzbekistan weathered the pandemic relatively well. Strong fundamentals, ample policy buffers, and high gold prices allowed the authorities to take strong actions to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and growth accelerated to 7.4 percent in 2021.
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
Uzbekistan embarked on an ambitious reform path in 2017, starting to liberalize its economy after years of state control. Incomes are still relatively low compared to other emerging economies. Uzbekistan entered the COVID-19 crisis with relatively strong macro-economic fundamentals.
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
This paper examines Republic of Uzbekistan’s Requests for Disbursement Under the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) and Purchase Under the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI). The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is significantly impacting Uzbekistan’s economy, reducing growth, and creating additional external and fiscal financing needs. IMF financial assistance under the RCF and the RFI, along with support from other multilateral institutions, will help cover Uzbekistan’s fiscal and balance of payments needs and mitigate the impact on its foreign exchange reserves. It will also provide resources to support increased crisis spending for healthcare, social protection, and public support for affected firms and households. Uzbekistan aims to continue implementing its structural reform agenda, to complete the transformation to a modern, open market economy, and to improve governance and public management. It has committed to safeguard the use and improve the efficiency of its public resources by increasing transparency and accountability.
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
Given its bulging working-age population, creating more and better jobs is the country’s overarching priority. Uzbekistan has already implemented a first wave of important economic reforms, including foreign exchange liberalization, tax reform, and a major upgrade in statistics. Faced with a vast structural reform agenda, the authorities want to prioritize reforms that address the economy’s most damaging distortions first. The main short-term macroeconomic stability challenge is to prevent a credit boom that could generate excessive external deficits and aggravate inflation pressures.
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
This 2019 Article IV Consultation highlights that given its bulging working-age population, creating more and better jobs is the country’s overarching priority. Uzbekistan has already implemented a first wave of important economic reforms, including foreign exchange liberalization, tax reform, and a major upgrade in statistics. Faced with a vast structural reform agenda, the authorities want to prioritize reforms that address the economy’s most damaging distortions first. The main short-term macroeconomic stability challenge is to prevent a credit boom that could generate excessive external deficits and aggravate inflation pressures. A tight monetary stance and moderate fiscal deficits need to be maintained to support macroeconomic stability. Credit growth will need to slow significantly to assure the economy’s external and internal balance. The sustainable development goals are anchoring the country’s inclusive growth agenda, especially on education, health, public infrastructure, and financial inclusion. Moreover, the authorities are redesigning labor policies from scratch to help unskilled and other disadvantaged workers find more and better jobs.
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
This 2018 Article IV Consultation highlights that Uzbekistan’s external position remains strong. External shocks, which began in 2014, lowered exports, commodity prices, and remittances and contributed to a decline in growth from about 8 percent to 5 percent in 2017. Growth of domestic employment remained below one percent. A loosening of fiscal and monetary policies, along with price and foreign exchange liberalization, caused inflation to pick up in late 2017 and was close to 20 percent in early 2018. International reserves were equivalent to 19 months of imports of goods and services at end-2017 and debt is low. GDP is projected to expand by about 5 percent in 2018–19, but domestic job creation will continue to lag.
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
This paper discusses 2012 Article IV Consultation of Republic of Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan has been experiencing strong momentum in economic growth supported by sustained public investment and increased prices for commodity exports. The IMF report suggests that it is important to ease the restrictiveness of the foreign exchange and trade regimes, as it impedes the development of the financial and private sectors and distorts resource allocation. Improvement economic data quality and transparency should also be a high- priority item in the action list.
International Monetary Fund
This 2008 Article IV Consultation highlights that the Uzbek economy has performed well in recent years. The favorable external environment and improvements in macroeconomic policies resulted in high growth rates, large current account surpluses, a significant decline in the debt burden, and a more than quadrupling of foreign exchange reserves from 2003 to 2007. Executive Directors have commended the authorities for Uzbekistan’s continued strong economic performance, which has benefited from a generally favorable external environment and an improved policy framework.