Republic of Uzbekistan: Selected Issues

This Selected Issues paper aims to characterize Uzbekistan’s state-owned enterprises (SOE) landscape, assess progress and remaining challenges in SOE reform, and discuss policy options to deepen reforms. Despite the concentration of assets in network sectors, the distribution of the number of SOEs suggests that they are spread throughout the economy and mostly in competitive sectors. A health check analysis of the largest nonfinancial SOEs (NFSOEs) suggests that as a group they pose moderate fiscal risks, but this result masks important sectoral differences within the portfolio. NFSOEs receive support from the government in a variety of ways to aid their financial performance and support ill-defined public service obligations. International experience can help provide options to address SOE reform challenges. A market environment that encourages competition and competitive neutrality. Markets where SOEs operate need to be sufficiently competitive to encourage company managers to be efficient and ensure SOEs do not have any advantage with respect to private firms to encourage them to enter economic sectors either directly or through privatizations.