TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, December 5. The Standard & Poor's (S&P Global Ratings) international rating agency forecasts Uzbekistan’s GDP rate to stand at 5.6 percent in 2023, Trend reports.
As per latest report by S&P Global Ratings, the GDP rate is expected to slightly decrease to about 5.0 percent from 2024 through 2026.
“The GDP growth is expected to average 5.2 percent over 2023-2026, supported by domestic demand and investment. Government stimulus in the form of tax incentives for businesses, export incentives, and social protection measures including providing subsidized mortgages and free medical services for vulnerable parts of the population, will drive consumption growth even as remittance inflows slow. The government also plans to expand the generation of electricity and volumes of gas, along with production of copper, gold, silver, and uranium, mainly through public private partnerships (PPPs) and foreign investment,” the report stated.
The S&P’s analysts noted that Uzbekistan's growth has been heavily investment-led over the past five years, with one of the highest investment-to-GDP ratios globally at about 35 percent.
“The government has borrowed externally to support projects in the electricity, oil and gas, transportation, and agricultural sectors. Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows remain relatively low and concentrated in the extractive industries," said the report.
"We expect that FDI inflows will increase only gradually despite the ambitious pipeline of privatizations, partially due to lower investment from Russian companies,” the agency noted.