Uzbekistan joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on September 21 1992. The IMF country office has been operating in Uzbekistan since September 1993. The Central Bank of Uzbekistan is designated as the office for cooperation with IMF.
Presently, Uzbekistan is the member of Swiss Constituency in the IMF that comprises 9 countries, such as Switzerland, Poland, Serbia, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Finance and the Chairman of the Central Bank are considered as the IMF Governor from Uzbekistan and Alternate Governor respectively.
The delegation of the Republic of Uzbekistan participates in the Annual Meetings of the IMF Board of Governors, the last of which took place in October 2018 in Indonesia.
The cooperation with IMF has significantly intensified in line with extensive reforms in macroeconomic policy in the last years.
During the visit of Uzbek delegation in a high level to New York on September 19th 2017, the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan had a bilateral meeting with Christine Lagarde, IMF Managing Director, the result of which was an agreement to provide recommendations and attract technical assistance missions to the ministries and authorities to help them with the execution of reforms and analysis of economic indicators.
Publication of the Staff report following the 2018 Article IV Consultation mission (February-March 2018) in the web-site of the Fund, in which the positive changes in the country has been reflected, can be considered as an important feature of the country’s economic policy. One of these is, of course, foreign exchange liberalization, characterized in the press-release as the first step followed by a wave of transformations, including price liberalization and reform of state owned enterprises and providing a greater independence to the Central bank of Uzbekistan and developing of monetary policy.
The IMF staff visits, the aim of which is defined in assessment of current state of the country’s economy, analysis of undertaken reforms and providing recommendations, are being organized on a regular basis. In 2018 such visits took place in July and November.
It is noteworthy that the high level visits of IMF representatives to the Republic of Uzbekistan have become more frequent. In particular, Mr. Jihad Azour, Director of Middle East and Central Asia Department (September 2017) and Mr. Tao Zhang, Deputy Managing Director of IMF (May 2018) were on an official visit to Uzbekistan. Both officials have emphasized in their statements that IMF welcomes economic reforms that undoubtedly contribute to economic growth and help to create jobs in the country. Moreover, they mentioned about the progress of the Central Bank in developing monetary and foreign exchange policy and encouraged the transition to inflation targeting in the middle term.
Furthermore, in light with IMF’s initiative, the presentations of the Report on “Regional Economic Outlook: Middle East and Central Asia”, presented by Juha Kahkonen, Deputy Director of Middle East and Central Asia Department, have been being organized since 2017 for the representatives of respective research institutions, universities, commercial banks, ministries and authorities.
Technical assistance missions, that focus on advancement of institutional capacity of economic authorities, can be contemplated as an important feature of bilateral cooperation between Uzbekistan and IMF, as 13 technical assistance missions have visited Uzbekistan in 2017-2018. The work of the experts has mainly concentrated on developing the monetary policy, fiscal policy and enhancing the system of financial indicators statistics.
|
№ |
Mission |
Period |
Ministry/authority |
Aim of the mission |
|
1 |
External sector statistics |
December 2017 |
1. Central Bank 2. State Committee on Statistics 3. Ministry of economy and industry |
Formulation of methodology for the compilation of external sector statistics, with the particular emphasis on balance of payment (BoP) and international investment position (IIP) |
|
2 |
Developing monetary policy operations, emergency liquidity assistance and interbank market development |
December 2017 |
1. Central Bank |
Modernizing monetary policy framework; interbank market development and formulation of the mechanism for developing monetary policy instruments. |
|
3 |
An interim monetary policy framework and strategy for the transition to inflation targeting |
February 2018 |
1. Central Bank |
Providing further recommendations to develop the instruments as well as transmission mechanism of the monetary policy |
|
4 |
Stress testing |
February 2018 |
1. Central Bank |
Reviewing the stress testing model to quantify the effects of an extreme but plausible downside scenario, and to help set up an introductory framework for stress testing. |
|
5 |
Review of the Tax System |
February 2018 |
1. Ministry of finance 2. Ministry of economy and industry 3. State Committee on Statistics 4. State Tax Committee 5. State Customs Committee 6. National Agency of Project Management (NAPM) |
Assessment of the Uzbekistan’s tax system and recommendations towards modern tax system via simplification, the multiplicity of tax instruments, and improvement of revenue productivity. |
|
6 |
The joining of the Republic of Uzbekistan to Enhanced General Data Dissemination System (e-GDDS) |
March 2018. |
1. State Committee on Statistics 2. Central Bank 3. Ministry of finance 4. Ministry of economy and industry |
Compilation of monetary indicators in compliance with IMF standardized forms, and creation of Uzbekistan’s National Summary Data Page (NSPD) in the IMF web-page. |
|
7 |
Updating national accounts |
April 2018 |
1. State Committee on Statistics 2. Central Bank 3. Ministry of economy and industry 3. Ministry of finance 4.Uzbekneftegaz |
Formulation of metadates in categories to publish in the National Summary Data Page (NSDP) in accordance with IMF standards. |
|
8 |
Government finance statistics |
May 2018 |
1. Ministry of finance 2. State Committee on Statistics |
Assisting in improving the quality of the government Finance Statistics (GFS) and reviewing the existing annual GFS series to ensure consistency and alignment with the IMF Government Finance Statistics Manual, conceptual framework. |
|
9 |
Fiscal transparency evaluation, and follow-up TA |
June 2018 October 2018 |
1. Ministry of finance 2. Central Bank 3. Ministry of economy and industry 4. NAPM 5. Ministry of labor 6. UFRD 7. State Committee for assistance to privatized enterprises and development of competition 8. Uzbekneftegaz |
Assessment of fiscal transparency, quality of government finance statistics compilation and the reliability of disclosed information in the public sector. |
|
10 |
Tax administration modernization |
June October 2018 November 2018 |
1. State Tax Committee 2.Ministry of finance |
Review the structure, management, operations and performance of the State Tax Committee to provide recommendations for ensuring completeness of the registration of taxpayers, collection of tax/mandatory payments and usage of technologies in the process of tax collection as well as mechanisms to ensure taxpayers’ compliance with tax legislation. |
|
11 |
Monetary and financial statistics |
September 2018 |
1. The Central bank |
Assistance in compilation and further improving the quality of monetary and financial statistics in order to publish in the IMF database “International Financial Statistics” (IFS). |
|
12 |
External sector statistics |
October 2018 |
1. Central bank 2. State Committee on Statistics 3. Ministry of economy and industry 4. Ministry of labor |
Bringing the balance of payments data for 2016-2017 into line with the sixth edition of the Balance of Payments and the international investment positionManual (BPM6). |
|
13 |
Stress testing |
November |
1. Central Bank |
Evaluation of the current implementation of top-down stress test model and recommendations to enhance the liquidity stress testing framework using LCR and cash-flow based approaches, and assist the CBU to build bottom-up stress testing framework in the banking system. |
