By Rustam Temirov | 2024-05-31

TASHKENT -- The business communities of Tashkent and Kyiv have been working together, with marked success, to boost economic cooperation against the backdrop of Russia's aggression in Ukraine, officials and entrepreneurs said.

To this end, Kyiv hosted the April 15 meeting of the Uzbek-Ukrainian Business Council, where agreements on exporting Uzbek goods and attracting Ukrainian investment worth $25 million were forged.

Established in 2021, the council has worked to deepen ties between entrepreneurs and business entities in the two countries.

"Last year businesspeople in our countries managed to increase bilateral trade volume even as the war continues," said Uzbek entrepreneur Zafar Khashimov, who chaired the meeting.

Attendees -- including Uzbek Ambassador to Ukraine Alisher Kurmanov and Ukrainian Ambassador to Uzbekistan Mykola Doroshenko -- discussed various issues and outlined measures and actions to remedy them.

Among the issues discussed was the customs value of textile products entering Ukraine from Uzbekistan, according to Khashimov.

"At customs they are taxed with an excessive value-added tax (VAT)," he said. "During the meeting, problems like this were brought to the attention of our Ukrainian partners and officials, and they decided to take steps to correct them."

Economic cooperation

The single most important point addressed at the summit, per the majority of Uzbek media outlets, was the possible transfer to Uzbekistan of a number of Ukrainian factories damaged by the war.

There is precedent for this, as during World War II, dozens of factories were transported to Uzbekistan in their entirety from the European part of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine.

Some factories remained in Uzbekistan after the end of the war in 1945 and grew into large enterprises -- among them the Tashkent Tractor Plant.

With Ukraine once again in the throes of a war, the idea has reemerged.

"In Uzbekistan there's particular interest in welcoming businesses with a high intellectual and technological level," Central Asia Due Diligence director Alisher Ilkhamov told Kontur.

Uzbekistan has shown growing interest in developing electronics and the information technology (IT) industry. Ukraine, meanwhile, has begun to develop and produce high-tech drones that use artificial intelligence (AI).

Cooperating with Ukraine in the IT sector would be a win for Uzbekistan, Ilkhamov said.

It also would help Ukraine safeguard its economic potential, he added.

Sharing technology

Business cooperation between the two countries and the transfer of Ukrainian businesses to Uzbekistan are both possible and necessary, said Nigara Khidoyatova, an Uzbek politician who resides in the United States.

"We must take into account that Uzbekistan doesn't belong to the [Russian-dominated] Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), so the Kremlin has little leverage to pressure Tashkent with," she told Kontur.

"Ukraine will become a field of cutting-edge trends, so we need to cooperate with them and create things together," Khidoyatova said.

The sharing of technology between the two countries can be seen already on the streets in Uzbekistan.

Last summer, online ride hailing service Uklon, developed by Ukrainian IT companies, launched in Uzbekistan. It has become the main competitor of Yandex Go, a Russian firm operating in Uzbekistan.

Tashkent resident Nuriddin Ibragimov said he prefers Uklon to Russia's Yandex.

"It's a very convenient service," he said. "It's generally cheaper than Yandex, and that's the most important thing for passengers. It would be nice to be able to hail the 'Ukrainian taxi' in different cities in Uzbekistan."