ECONOMY

At a solemn meeting dedicated to the 21th anniversary of the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov noted that over the past ’22 our independent of our development Uzbekistan’s economy has grown 4.1 times within this period, and in per capita terms it multiplied at least threefold, taking into account at the same time that the population of the country increased for this period by nearly 9.7 million people to reach the current 30.5 million approximately.

Notwithstanding the grave repercussions of the still ongoing global financial and economic downturn, the annual growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) has exceeded 8 percent in 2008-2013, while this indicator is projected at 8.1 percent in the year 2014. Very few countries around the world have been able to boast similar economic growth rates.

The real aggregate per capita incomes have enlarged 8.2 times for the independent development years.

Macroeconomic indicators have been maintained in balanced terms, so has the annual surplus of the State Budget.

The public external debt of the country does not top 16 percent of the GDP, while the internal debt has a zero valuation, amid the mounting volumes of exports and gold and currency reserves.

During the independent development period, capital investments equaling more than 162 billion US dollars in dollar estimates, including in excess of 56 billion dollars of foreign investments, have been drawn in Uzbekistan’s economy.

The volume of capital investments in 2013 is to make up 14 billion dollars in dollar estimates, which is 23 percent of the GDP.

Within a historically brief span of time, Uzbekistan has turned from a land with a one-sided raw-material based economy with a destructive monopoly of cotton production into a dynamically growing country with a modern industry advancing with speedy rates.

This is backed expressively by the fact that the share of manufacturing industry in Uzbekistan’s GDP amounts currently to 24.3 percent in contrast to the 14.2 percent back in 1990. In the meanwhile, the proportion of agriculture in the GDP has reduced from 34 percent to 17 percent in 2013.

During independence years, such novel sectors have been established in Uzbekistan as automotive industry, home appliances manufacturing, hydrocarbon-chemical production, pharmaceuticals industry, while the food and light industries, chemical industry, manufacturing construction materials and other sectors have undergone complete modernization and reorientation to the production of competitive goods with higher added value.