The World Bank anticipates that Uzbekistan’s annual GDP growth will amount to 5.5% for three years in a row, namely in 2023, 2024 and 2025, according to its latest Global Economic Prospects report, released on January 10.

In its previous edition of Global Economic Prospects, released in June 2023, the World Bank predicted Uzbekistan’s GDP growth in 2023 would be 5.1%, while it would be 5.4% in 2024 and 5.8% in 2025.

In a note on Central Asia, the latest report edition said: “Growth in Central Asia is forecasted to be broadly stable at about 4.8 percent a year over 2024-25, the highest among subregions. Still-high commodity prices, resilient consumer spending amid cooling inflation, and sustained export growth benefiting from rising oil production capacity in Kazakhstan, are expected to support the activity.

“Trade diversion triggered by the invasion [of Ukraine by Russia], leading to increased exports to the region from countries that have reduced their exports to Russia, is expected to persist. The flow of remittances from Russia will wind down but remain well above pre-invasion levels.”

Looking beyond 2024 on a global basis, the World Bank sounded a warning, saying: "Global inflation is being tamed without tipping the world into a recession. It is rare for countries to bring inflation rates down without triggering a downturn, but this time a 'soft landing' seems increasingly possible. Yet beyond the next two years, the outlook is dark.

"The end of 2024 will mark the halfway point of what was expected to be a transformative decade for development—when extreme poverty was to be extinguished, when major communicable diseases were to be eradicated, and when greenhouse-gas emissions were to be cut nearly in half. What looms instead is a wretched milestone: the weakest global growth performance of any half-decade since the 1990s, with people in one out of every four developing economies poorer than they were before the pandemic."