Uzbekistan Enters “Moderately Free” Economies Category

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) — Uzbekistan ranked 86th in the global Index of Economic Freedom 2026, published by the The Heritage Foundation, scoring 60.3 points and improving its result by 2.3 points compared to the previous year. As a result, the country has entered the category of “moderately free” economies for the first time.

The index showed that Uzbekistan’s score exceeded the global average of 59.9 points.

The country demonstrated its strongest performance in economic openness: the Trade Freedom index reached 80.6 points, while Investment Freedom stood at 70.0 points—both significantly above global averages.

The improvement in the ranking coincided with stronger key economic indicators.

Uzbekistan’s foreign trade turnover increased from US$63.5 billion in 2023 to US$81.2 billion in 2025, while exports rose from US$24.9 billion to US$33.8 billion. At the same time, the volume of foreign investment and loans in fixed capital more than doubled, reaching 422.1 trillion soums.