Results of monitoring of Uzbekistan in the Istanbul Action Plan announced

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) - An international conference was held on 23 May 2019, devoted to the OECD mission’s repeated visit to Uzbekistan as part of the Anti-Corruption Network in Eastern Europe and Central Asia following the 4th round of monitoring of the Istanbul Action Plan on Combating corruption

The conference was attended by representatives of the Republican Interdepartmental Anti-Corruption Commission, Chambers of Parliament, law enforcement agencies, the Supreme Court, ministries and departments, civil society institutions, political parties, the media, as well as international organizations and the diplomatic community.

The OECD Network Secretariat was represented by T. Khavanska and three experts directly involved in the 4th monitoring round of Uzbekistan Y. Vasiliyuskaite, M. Kalugin and I. Tsakadze.

A representative of the OECD Network Secretariat noted that the report on Uzbekistan in the 4th monitoring round of the Istanbul Anti-Corruption Action Plan was adopted at the plenary session of the Network on 21 March 2019 and a return visit to the country was organized to present a report and discuss priorities for further action on the implementation of its recommendations.

The report presents an analysis of Uzbekistan’s efforts to combat corruption and implement the recommendations of the report of the 3rd monitoring round. The monitoring focused on anti-corruption policies, the prevention of corruption and the criminalization of corruption. For the first time, the report also includes an in-depth study of the risks of corruption in the tax sector.

During the event, experts marked a pronounced political will of the country’s leadership in the implementation of comprehensive measures to eradicate corruption and the beginning of a fundamentally new stage of systemic anti-corruption reforms based on the principle “The people should not serve the state bodies, but the state bodies should serve the people”.

As a result of the ongoing reforms in Uzbekistan, progress has been made in the implementation of measures on virtually all recommendations. In particular, according to the results of monitoring, Uzbekistan received a rating on the availability of progress on all recommendations, including full implementation - 3; execution mostly - 8; partial execution - 10.

During the conference, the main conclusions on each section of the report and the follow-up actions of state bodies, civil society and business circles aimed at implementing recommendations in the field of combating corruption were discussed.

Following the conference, it is planned to develop an action plan to be implemented by Uzbekistan in the framework of the new recommendations of the Istanbul Action Plan for the public and private sectors, as well as civil society institutions.