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By Demir Azizov

Uzbekistan plans to sell the state share and the share of the economic board in 68 large enterprises of the country to the strategic foreign investors. This is envisaged by the President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov’s decree "On measures of increasing the share and the value of private property in the economy", published in the local media.

The country’s ministries and departments have critically analyzed the availability of the state shares and assets in the statutory funds of the enterprises. The proposals for the cardinal reduction of the state's share in the sectors and areas of the real economy have been worked out, the document says.

The list of the joint-stock companies, the state shares of which will be sold to the strategic foreign investors, in particular, includes the largest enterprise of chemical industry of the country - Navoiazot JSC (49 percent), the largest enterprise in the cement industry - Kyzylkumcement JSC (35.9 percent), commercial banks - Turonbank (63.1 percent) and Aloqabank (47.6 percent), insurance companies Uzagrosugurta (24.6 percent) and Kafolat (15.5 percent).

In order to evaluate the state stake on sale, the document recommends attracting mainly international valuation organizations. It is planned to approve the schedule of evaluation and put up the state stakes for sale within a month.

Aside from the stakes of large industrial enterprises, the president’s decree also envisages the public sale of state stakes and shares of economic board of 343 joint-stock companies to the private ownership and first of all to the foreign investors. It is aimed at modernization, technical re-equipment of these companies and organization of competitive output.

It is planned to sell 512 state property facilities, including incomplete construction projects on a competitive basis with “zero” redemption value and with undertaking investment obligations.

Moreover, 324 unused state property facilities will be fully sold in public sales.

It was earlier reported that Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov, in his report on year 2014 at the meeting of the cabinet of ministers, stressed the need for a critical assessment of the level of government’s involvement in the economy and reducing it to a strategically and economically reasonable sizes.

“It is time to carry out a full-scale critical analysis of the availability and effectiveness of the presence of state shares in the economy, in other words, ‘the state’s presence in the economy’, and on this basis, to define our actions for a significant increase in the private sector’s presence in the economy,” said the president.

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