World Bank Document

economic growth. In 2014-15, the government increased public investment, cut business and personal 

income taxes, and increased public sector wages, the minimum wage, and pensions. According to 

official data, the significant fiscal efforts have maintained GDP growth at 8.1 percent in 2014 and 8 

percent in 2015. They are also estimated to have maintained poverty at about 13.7 percent in 2015. 

The cost of the successful counter cyclical polices has been to erode Uzbekistan’s fiscal and external 

buffers while edging up the countries’ external debt, which still remains low. The consolidated fiscal 

balance dropped from a surplus of 2 percent of GDP in 2014 to an estimated 0.4 percent of GDP in 

2015 while the current account surplus declined from 1.7 percent of GDP in 2014 to about one percent 

of GDP in 2015. As a consequence, total external debt increased from 13 percent of GDP in 2014 to 

15.8 percent of GDP in 2015.  

 

 

11. 

The outlook for Uzbekistan remains positive, despite the external environment, based 

on the continuation of counter cyclical policies, a bottoming out of commodity prices and a 

gradual deepening of the reform agenda. Uzbekistan’s external environment is expected to 

stabilize or recover moderately as commodity prices pick up and the Russian economy 

                                                           

3

 The 2014-15 shock was due to sharper declines in commodity prices, especially of natural gas, and to slower growth in China in 

addition to the deeper recession in Russia compared to 2011-13.