“The sooner we become members of the WTO, the better” – Badriddin Obidov

Badriddin Obidov, Deputy Minister of Investments and Foreign Trade, was asked at the economic forum of Uzbekistan about what Uzbekistan is doing in the World Trade Organization.

“Uzbekistan has approached a new round after the negotiations in June of this year,” Kun.uz correspondent quotes the deputy minister as saying.

“As you know, in the past 5-6 years, we have liberalized our foreign trade regime, and that’s why we have now reached the point where we can provide information on various directions to the WTO membership. We held a working group meeting in June and are approaching the next round of negotiations. Therefore, at the meeting in June, we presented 13 new documents and provided information on all directions. In the next step, we will start negotiations with the WTO member states and take the process to a new stage. We hope that this process will happen soon,” he said.

When the moderator asked the deputy minister about the exact deadline, he said that it would not be correct to set a specific time, it would depend on the state of negotiations and the ability to fulfill commitments.

“Our plan is reflected in the “Development Strategy” and now we are in a fast process. The sooner we become a member of the World Trade Organization, the better,” Badriddin Obidov said.

For information, the Development Strategy for 2022-2026 defines a plan for negotiations with the WTO member states during 2022. For this, it is planned to allocate 50 billion soums from budget and non-budget funds.

Yesterday, it was known that Uzbekistan submitted the necessary documents for holding a meeting of the working group on WTO membership.