Changing for the Better

As a low-middle-income country with a
gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of US$1,715 and a
population of 30 million (nearly half of all of the Central
Asian population), Uzbekistan has seen stable economic
progress since the mid-2000s, both in terms of growth and
poverty reduction. Growth has averaged 8 percent per year
since 2004 and extreme poverty has declined from 27 percent
in 2000 to 15 percent in 2012. Encouraged by this
outstanding growth performance, the Uzbek authorities have
set an ambitious goal for the country, to join the group of
upper-middle-income countries by 2030. This note discusses
the main challenges that the government is likely to face
and the structural transformations that the economy will
have to undergo to achieve this objective.