Baku, Azerbaijan, July 27
By Fikret Dolukhanov – Trend:
Uzbekistan utilized only 26 percent of the total planned investments in 1H2018, the press service of the president of Uzbekistan stated referring to a video conference on implementation of projects involving foreign investments, held by Shavkat Mirziyoyev on July 26
In 2018, it is planned to implement 2,612 investment projects worth over $6.85 billion. Of these, $4.9 billion are foreign investments, including $2.3 billion in loans from international financial institutions and $2.6 billion in direct investments.
The president criticized the unsatisfactory state of utilization of these funds and implementation of projects.
In 2018, within the framework of 82 projects, involving international organizations and foreign countries, it is planned to utilize $2.283 billion. In 1H2018, only 26 percent of this amount was utilized.
One of the main reasons is reluctance of industry leaders and enterprises to take responsibility, as well as the practice of postponing utilization of large bulk of the funds (up to 70 percent) to the end of the year.
Another reason is that credit resources are not attracted to carefully designed projects with ready-made documentation, but rather under the principle of “first getting the funds, and then flowing by the stream”. The head of state also noted that many procedures were unnecessarily complicated under the pretext of coordinating and controlling the implementation of investment projects.
Mirziyoyev instructed the prime minister and his deputies to approve new industry schedules for utilizing the main part of the funds of international and foreign financial organizations in August-October 2018 and fully implementing the forecast figures by the end of 2018.
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