TASHKENT: Uzbekistan expressed hope that it will establish itself as a major IT outsourcing centre, able to compete with Belarus, India, Ukraine and Romania. This was stated by Uzbekistan’s ICT Minister Sherzod Shermatov. The Minister said that the country has already seen its export revenue increase exponentially in the past four years.
Sherzod Shermatov said that last year the revenues the country earned from IT outsources increased three-fold to more than $300mn. The Minister maintained that the country has been more than doubling each year over the past four years.
He said that Uzbekistan is one of only two double landlocked nation in the world and they have a very fast increasing population, so the country’s president main priority is to create jobs. He said that they cannot only export IT but it also creates jobs for their people.
Uzbekistan and IT
Shermatov added that some of Uzbekistan’s most talented engineers had left the country to work for the global IT titans such as Facebook. However, Uzbekistan has begun to flourish on the back of President’s liberal economic reforms they see more and more opportunity in their country and are starting to return home and establish new businesses, as are an increasing number of foreign companies.
The Minister said that Uzbekistan has not just establishing Tashkent IT Park, but is making efforts to build a countrywide ecosystem to support the IT industry. He said that the main export market so far is the United States but they are already looking to diversify to new markets.
The minister concluded that the government has ambitious goals; the target is to increase IT outsourcing exports to $5bn employing around 300,000 people, as part of the president’s 2030 plan.
