Berlin hosts Uzbekistan-Germany business forum

In his welcoming speech, Jamshid Khodjaev, Deputy Prime Minister of Uzbekistan, stressed the active development of bilateral relations between Uzbekistan and Germany in recent years, which was achieved thanks to the trust and political will of the two countries.

The sides noted the growth in mutual trade turnover, which has doubled over the past five years. At the end of 2022, the indicators of bilateral trade grew by another 50% and, for the first time, exceeded 1 billion euros.

Consistent dynamics are also observed in investment cooperation and industrial partnership. The number of enterprises with German equity investment set up in Uzbekistan has increased nearly threefold over the past few years and exceeded 200 units. The total volume of German investments since 2017 has grown 11-fold to exceed 4 billion euros. Many German companies, such as MAN, CLAAS, Knauf, GP Papenburg, Viessmann, Deutsche Kabel, and LEMKEN are already actively and very successfully doing business in Uzbekistan and launching new productions.

The attention of German business circles was drawn to conditions created in Uzbekistan for the comfortable work of foreign investors, as well as the strengths of the Uzbek economy. In particular, high human resource potential, strategic geographical position, free trade regimes with CIS countries, the GSP+ status, active efforts to join the World Trade Organization, rich resources of raw materials and direct support of the leadership and government in joint projects and initiatives were noted.

The most promising areas for building long-term cooperation are energy, chemical, food and textile industries, metallurgy, automotive industry, agriculture, production of building materials, electrical engineering, as well as pharmaceuticals and health care.

Representatives of German business circles gave a high appreciation of the results of economic reforms pursued in Uzbekistan, which have yielded, among other things, comfortable conditions for foreign investors working in the country. The sides expressed a firm commitment to step up cooperation and work out new joint projects.

The forum continued with B2B meetings and presentations of concrete cases and projects in various sectors of Uzbekistan's economy.