Share of small businesses in Uzbekistan’s GDP exceeds 51.2%

In nine months of 2013, over 21,200 new small businesses (without farms) were created in Uzbekistan, which resulted in growth of production of industrial output of small businesses by 15.2%.

Largest number of small enterprises was created in trade and catering (29.1% from total volume), industry (28.7%) and construction (10.4%).

The publication said that 67 state assets were sold to private sector for 26.9 billion soums and 21,800 unused state objects were rented to this sector.

The commercial banks allocated loans for 5.6 trillion soums (1.1 trillion of microloans) in nine months of 2013, which rose by 1.3 times year-on-year. The loans for US$116.6 million were issued within credit lines of international financial institutes.

The public procurement from small businesses exceeded 280.4 billion soums, which made up 92.3% of total public procurement. Over 170,000 deals were signed with small businesses.

The Bureau for assisting exports of products under Uzstandard agency helped to 376 enterprises to start to export their products. It also established work of cooperation with 29 countries in strandartization, metrology, certification, accreditation, export of products and introduction of country requirements.

The adopted measures helped to increase share of small businesses in GDP up to 51.2% (51% in 9 months of 2012), industry – 23.3% (22.3%), employment – 75.6% (75.1%) and export – 19.1% (13.5%).