Uzbekistan to host international experts for Global Dialogue on Multidimensional Poverty

The Global Partnership Network on Multidimensional Poverty, established in 2013, brings together 63 countries and over 30 international organizations. The network supports policymakers in assessing multidimensional poverty and developing more effective measures to reduce it. Annual meetings within this network have been held in Berlin (2014), Cartagena (2015), Acapulco (2016), Beijing (2017), Johannesburg (2018), Mahé (2019), and Santiago (2021). This year, such a meeting will also take place in Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan has begun actively addressing poverty reduction. Poverty was officially recognized as a critical issue for the country in the President’s 2020 Address. At that time, nearly 6 million people were considered poor, with 41% of the working-age population employed in the informal sector.

The creation of the "Unified Social Protection Registry" information system has significantly enhanced social support for the population. In 2017, 500,000 families received social assistance, but by 2023, this number had risen to 2.3 million. From 2018 to 2023, social benefit expenditures increased 3.7 times.

To combat poverty by creating new jobs, programs such as "Every Family is an Entrepreneur" and "20,000 Entrepreneurs and 500,000 Skilled Specialists" were launched to support entrepreneurship development. Additionally, special assistance is provided to female entrepreneurs to encourage and support women starting their businesses.

In 2022, a national system called "Mahallabay" was introduced, aimed at reducing poverty and supporting entrepreneurship at the smallest administrative level—mahallas, of which there are nearly 9,400 in the country. Between 2022-2024, the system allocated $1.7 billion in microcredits for 977,600 family entrepreneurship projects and nearly $52 million in subsidies for 152,000 people. Due to the implementation of this system, Uzbekistan's poverty rate has significantly decreased from 17% to 11% since the beginning of 2021. Nearly 2 million people have been lifted out of poverty.