An agreement was signed between the Ministry of Investments and Foreign Trade (MIFT) of Uzbekistan and the Chinese CITIC Corporation on the creation of a joint Uzbek-Chinese investment fund with a statutory fund of $1 billion.

The document was inked on August 27 as part of the Uzbekistan government delegation’s visit to China. The head of the mission was PM Abdulla Aripov, the MIFT reported.  

The ministry noted that this step indicates a high growth rate of the scale of investment cooperation between the two countries: formation of a sustainable financing mechanism will allow focusing efforts on the accelerated implementation of priority high-tech projects.

By prior agreement with Chinese partners, emphasis will be placed on industrial enterprises in the chemical and petrochemical industries and production facilities in the oil and gas sector.

In the short term, the MIFT will prepare a pool of promising project proposals for implementation at the expense of the fund, among which a significant share will be “export-oriented enterprises of multi-stage production cycles having output products with high added value, with deployment in the regions of the republic with the appropriate raw material base and human resources”.

In this regard, an agreement was reached with the Chinese side on holding a series of meetings and negotiations in Uzbekistan to determine the address list of projects for feasibility studies and subsequent approval.