BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 27. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev ordered the creation of a special task force to overhaul electricity and gas supply in Yangiyol District, saying the district would serve as a pilot for nationwide energy sector reforms.
This was reflected in the statement published by the official channel of the Press Secretary to the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan following a government meeting on the industry's priorities.
The task force will be headed by newly appointed Energy Minister Sherzod Khodjaev, with Yangiyol District Governor San'at Jumaniyozov serving as deputy.
Within two weeks, officials are to assess the monthly, quarterly and annual electricity and gas demand of households and businesses across the district's 51 neighborhoods, creating a detailed energy consumption balance to guide future infrastructure investment.
The government will identify where transformers, gas distribution facilities and power lines need to be upgraded, replace electricity and gas meters that are incompatible with the country's automated metering systems, and restore data transmission from non-functioning devices.
Mirziyoyev also ordered the development of a separate program to halve electricity and gas losses, with funding sources to be identified from both state-owned utility companies and local government revenues.
Large industrial consumers will undergo energy audits and receive bank financing to adopt more energy-efficient technologies, while energy consumption at schools, kindergartens, hospitals, clinics and vocational colleges will also be assessed.
Authorities will inspect heating systems in apartment buildings and conduct door-to-door campaigns to reduce overdue utility payments. The work is scheduled for completion by Oct. 1, after which Yangiyul is expected to become a model district for reliable electricity and gas supply.
Mirziyoyev said the Yangiyul model would subsequently be rolled out across Uzbekistan, with senior energy executives assigned to the most challenging district in each region to implement the reforms by the end of the year.
The president also ordered the establishment of a Center for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence in the Fuel and Energy Sector within the Energy Ministry.
The center will conduct a "stress audit" of the country's energy supply chain—from generation and transmission to distribution—as well as coal, liquefied gas and fuel oil supplies, before developing multiple scenarios for the sector's future development.
Officials will introduce a digital management system to monitor the daily work of employees, while artificial intelligence will analyze data from the country's automated electricity and gas metering systems (ASKUE and ASKUG) to detect suspicious consumption patterns.
The government will also introduce 10 key performance indicators (KPIs) for the energy sector's 106,000 employees, measuring performance based on planned and unplanned outages, network losses, overdue receivables, reserve capacity and progress on maintenance programs.
