Jamshid Kuchkarov: Uzbekistan bond sale will aid foreign direct investment

In an interview with Bloomberg correspondents, Finance Minister of Uzbekistan said Euro bond sale will help attracting foreign direct investment to the country.

When asked about which state companies might tap the market in the wake of the sovereign, the Minister of Finance said not only state-owned companies, but also some biggest commercial banks will be entrusted to do the job as Uzbekistan has already set a good benchmark for them.

- Many will say this bond offering is good news to help foreign direct investment into Uzbekistan. Do you see it as being a big moment to say to the world “Invest here”?

- We are sure that issuing sovereign bond by Uzbekistan is good news for FDI or I would say potential investor to Uzbekistan. Because issuing a bond makes us accountable before foreign investors and all of our partners

- What about the access of Uzbek economic statistics in English? Some investors have shown a little bit of concern around this. What assurances can you offer them?

- This issue is basically new for us. I mean the openness of statistical data. If you know, we have joined the IMF statistical dissemination agreement. And now all of the data regarding to economics can easily be found out on the website of the IMF. But at the same time, we are working on translating them into English in an online regime. For example, the Central Bank, the Ministry of Finance and some of other leading economic institutions have already some information in English. But we have to improve our work in this area.

- Minister can I ask you about the currency? Your currency is not free floating at the moment. Is it your ambition to perhaps introduce more free capacity on the currency side?

- First of all, I should note that starting from September 2017, we introduced free access to foreign currency and now we have free floating exchange rate and everybody has free access to foreign currency, including foreign investors. They easily can get it for the purposes of import or repatriation of their profit. There is no problem here. But there is limitation on capital movement in currency market.

- Speaking of investment let me talk about gold. Will there be any large state licenses for gold deposit auctions?

 - In Uzbekistan, we have two big gold mining companies and they basically have huge deposits for them. But we are preparing some proposals to provide investors with some landmarks to explore the sphere.