Русский
Russia and Uzbekistan have agreed to triple their bilateral trade volumes with a goal of reaching US$30 billion by 2030. In addition, Russia’s Atomstroyexport JSC has signed a contract with the Uzbekistan Directorate for Nuclear Power Plant Construction to build a low-capacity nuclear power plant in Uzbekistan’s Jizzakh region. The decisions follow meetings in Tashkent between Russian President Putin and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
Bilateral Trade
The Russian and Uzbek trade delegations accompanying both Presidents discussed their rapidly growing mutual trade and plans to increase its volume to US$30 billion during top-level negotiations in an expanded format in Tashkent. To help attain this goal, the delegations agreed that Uzbekistan would set up a full-fledged trade mission in Russia. 2023 bilateral trade was US$10 billion.
Uzbekistan and Russia reviewed new industrial cooperation projects in the energy, metallurgy, petrochemicals, engineering, mineral extraction, agriculture, logistics, pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence, and other sectors. A joint investment platform will be launched to promote such projects.
In the energy sector, agreements were made to upgrade the gas transport system, increase shipments of gas, oil, and petroleum products, and pursue projects for processing fossil fuels. Uzbekistan is the world’s 18th largest producer of natural gas and 2nd largest in Central Asia after Turkmenistan. Gazprom Neft and Uzbekneftegaz signed an agreement in which the Russian company will assist in optimizing the processes to drill wells at Uzbekistan’s fields.
In the tourism sector, Russia and Uzbekistan signed a joint tourism action plan, with the mutual flow of tourists targeted to increase by 40% by 2027. The number of trips will approach 2 million per year.
A number of large-scale bilateral infrastructure projects are also being discussed in order to build a metallurgical cluster, a gas chemical plant, and a copper concentrator in Uzbekistan.
Nuclear Power
The Jizzakh nuclear power project includes the construction of a Russian-designed 330 MW low-capacity nuclear power plant, containing six reactors with a capacity of 55 MW each. Rosatom will act as a general contractor for building the plant, while local Uzbeki companies will also be involved in the construction, which is expected to begin this summer. The plant will be commissioned from 2029 to 2033 in stages, module by module.
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